Perfect Keyboard
by Jonathan Lonczak
May 9, 2011 10:00 AM –
Install
Perfect Keyboard. Take command of your Android device’s touchpad keypad with a smart and Perfect Keyboard. You can customize the look of the keyboard with. Eight different themes and add additional functionality to your device. Perfect Keyboard lets you use custom dictionaries, control background and text colors, and adjust the keyboard’s vibration density. In short, Perfect Keyboard allows you to setup your Android phone or tablet’s touchpad keyboard so that it works best for you. Note: Perfect Keyboard works only on Android 2.2 and up.
Price: Demo is Free, ~$2.80 for the Full Version
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- Fully customizable keyboard with full user control!
- Comes with 8 different keyboard themes and unimaginable combinations of color schemes!!
- Allows you to control key spacing, key height, and font size!
- Allows for use of any AnySoftKeyboard dictionary!
- Allows you to adjust strength of vibration for haptic feedback!
- Allows you to adjust volume of sound for key press!!
- Allows for use of gestures for actions like “Delete Last Word” or “Show Cursors!”
Cons
- Does not allow for keyboard skinning outside of the 8 included themes.
- Does not allow for sizing specific keys or fully adjusting key width.
Features:
Perfect Keyboard is an excellent keyboard replacement application similar to Swiftkey, Better Keyboard, or A.I. Keyboard. I used Perfect Keyboard as my only keyboard on my Galaxy Tablet, Samsung Fascinate, and HTC Thunderbolt for over 4 days before writing this review.
The first feature that I liked about Perfect Keyboard is it’s many dictionary options. Perfect Keyboard does not auto-correct all of your words like Swiftkey, but instead makes suggestions based on the user’s selected dictionary. The word suggestions were similar to that of the standard Android keyboard and allows me to type words that weren’t in the standard dictionary without having to constantly go back and erase an auto-corrected word. I really liked the way the application allowed for the use of more user generated words.
Perfect Keyboard also supports skinning and various color schemes for the keyboard. I personally preferred the Basic and iPhone themes for perfect keyboard. There are screen shots of all the themes below with their standard color schemes. The themes included Basic, Stone, Gingerbread, Silicone, and iPhone with a few variations of each keyboard theme.
After choosing a theme for the keyboard you could change the basic color scheme for they keyboard through the appearance options. The program allows you to choose font color, button color, as well as keyboard background color. In general the appearance options were plentiful and very easy to use.
Perfect Keyboard also allow the user to configure the vibration of the keyboard as well as the sound. You can turn vibration on or off and adjust the strength of the key vibration through the Vibrate and Sound Menu. Likewise you can turn on or off key press sounds through the same menu. Perfect Keyboard also allows you to change the type of key press sound as well as the volume of each key press.
The keyboard spacing was adequate by default for a smartphone, but Perfect Keyboard also allows you to adjust the height of the keys, spacing between keys, and the distance between the keyboard and your punctuation. This feature is extremely useful as it allows you to customize the keyboard to the size of your device and your hands. On my Galaxy Tablet I was able to enlarge the keyboard perfectly to fit the large device and I was extremely pleased with it’s performance.
Finally, Perfect Keyboard includes the ability to use gestures to perform certain actions. You can gesture backwards along the keyboard to erase the previous word. My personal favorite was the ability to swipe up from the space bar to bring up cursor keys. This feature to swipe for cursor keys is excellent because it allows you to use all of the existing screen space for your typing, but still allows you to bring up cursor keys when needed for easy editing. This one feature is a big advantage over Thumb Keyboard or SwiftKey.
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Perfect Keyboard Gingerbread Theme
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Perfect Keyboard iPhone Vertical
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Perfect Keyboard Droid Classic Theme
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Perfect Keyboard Stone Theme
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Perfect Keyboard Silicone Theme
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Perfect Keyboard Theme Options
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Perfect Keyboard Theme Iphone Horizontal
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Perfect Keyboard Tweaks
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Perfect Keyboard Gesture Options
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Perfect Keyboard Feedback Options
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Perfect Keyboard Dictionary Options
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Perfect Keyboard Appearance Options
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Perfect Keyboard Autocorrect Options
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Perfect Keyboard Options
Usefulness:
Perfect Keyboard is extremely useful if you are looking for a customizable keyboard similar to the stock Android experience. Perfect Keyboard is packed with lots of features that allow you to customize the way you use the keyboard and tailor the keyboard to your specific device.
I love the way that Perfect Keyboard allows you to adjust the height of the keys and the size of the font to fit your specific style of typing and device. I also love the useful features like gestures to allow you to easily delete mistyped words and bring up the cursor keys.
Perfect Keyboard also has excellent dictionary support allows you to use any AnySoftKeyboard Dictionary with their application. This allows you to further tailor the typing experience to the user’s benefit.
Ease of Use:
Perfect Keyboard is very easy to use. It has many customization options which are all easily accessible and self explanatory that allow you to personalize your typing experience. I love the addition of gestures to the keyboard allowing easy access to the cursor keys without cluttering up your keyboard when typing. I also love the way that you can adjust the size of the keyboard to match the size of your device.
Perfect Keyboard’s customization options are what really allow it to shine, and are what allow it to be such an incredibly easy keyboard to use.
Frequently Used:
I have been using Perfect Keyboard for the past 4 days and I have been pleasantly surprised with it’s versatility and customization options. I was very hesitant to use the application as a replacement to my go-to keyboard, Thumb Keyboard. As I became more accustomed to the layout and after making a few tweaks to the size of the keys and key spacing I was able to get the keyboard almost perfectly to my liking.
I especially like the way it formats in portrait mode on my Galaxy Tablet. It allows me to make the keys very large and space them almost perfectly for my oversized hands. I would highly recommend at least downloading the free trial of Perfect Keyboard to see how it works for you. This is a keyboard that could easily become a daily flyer and I personally think is far superior to Better Keyboard and is easier to type on than SwiftKey.
Interface:
The interface for Perfect Keyboard is very easy to use. At any time while using the keyboard you can access the keyboard settings by hitting the gear symbol by the microphone. The application comes packed with all of the customization options that I have previously covered and makes for a very pleasant user experience. The only two issues I had with the application was the lack of keyboard skin packs and the inability to change the width of the keys.
The one major issue I experience while typing using any keyboard except for Thumb Keyboard is that I constantly find myself hitting the period key when I am trying to hit the space bar. This issue occurs because I have large fingers and the period key is close enough to the space bar that sometimes I will accidentally miss the space bar entirely and hit the period key. I would love to see an option in this or any other keyboard alternative where we can either change the width of individual keys or where we can change the width of all keys universally. Yes this can be adjusted a bit through changing the key spacing, but I found that even with spacing adjustments I still was running into this problem.
My last complaint is only a minor grievance, Perfect Keyboard does not currently support the addition of different themes through theme packs. This is the one area that Better Keyboard does an excellent job in. It allows users to create keyboard themes based on their individual tastes. One way that Perfect Keyboard could accomplish this at least partially would be to allow users to make back-ups of their existing keyboard layout and color scheme. This would allow users to switch between various theming options without having to go through the trouble of adjusting each individual theme and color setting.