If you’re a Swype user participating in our beta program you’ll be receiving a nice little update within the next 72hrs, directly through Swype’s built-in update process. This new version includes some hotly requested features, a few fixes, and a preliminary release of the long-awaited Ice Cream Sandwich support – a big deal for you Galaxy Nexus owners out there! Read on for details on what’s new, what’s better, and what to look out for!

Ice Cream Sandwich users rejoice! Swype now officially supports ICS!  This initial release for ICS may still contain a few, hard-to-find bugs, but we know how much you’ve been asking for it, so we figured it was time to let the beast out of its cage.  Enjoy the best touchscreen keyboard on the best version of Android, with all of the latest features, such as language downloads and advanced language modeling!

If you’re in the U.S., the first thing you’ll want to check out once you get your hands on this latest version – v3.26.92.38303 – of Swype BETA is the new Dragon GO! integration.  The “Dragon” key is your gateway to all things Dragon! Now, in addition to tapping the “Dragon” key to use Dragon Dictation, U.S. Beta users can press-and-hold the “Dragon” key to launch Dragon GO!  Don’t have Dragon GO! for Android yet? You can grab it on the Android Market, or just check the new “Add-on manager” section of the Swype Settings menu to download it directly (*Please note that at this time, Dragon Go! is available exclusively to Swype Beta users in the U.S.).

In the “we meant to do that, we swear!” department, beta users can look forward to significantly improved prediction accuracy in a number of languages, as we’ve squashed a couple of bugs that were affecting our Advanced Language Modeling and language dictionaries.  WXGA-resolution devices will also enjoy the benefits of language downloads this time around. Additionally, we’ve re-enabled the EMOTICON key in SMS apps (when the app requests it).

Finally, a few words of warning:  First, Ice Cream Sandwich users are strongly encouraged to DISABLE ICS’S BUILT-IN SPELL-CHECKER. Swype’s dictionary is stored separately from the dictionary that ICS uses for spell-checking.  Therefore words you add to the Swype dictionary will still show up as “misspellings” according to the spell-checker.  This produces a poor user experience.   Second, JAPANESE USERS should be aware that due to incompatibilities between Japanese and non-Japanese build configurations, we will no longer be offering Japanese via language downloads.  Instead, users who want Japanese language support will need to UNINSTALL the current version of Swype and download the new ENGLISH+JAPANESE ONLY version available through the Swype Installer.

That’s it!  Now what’re you all waiting for?! Go get it!

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