GO Keyboard - Emojis & Themes 3.94

Tired of your old Android keyboard? Me neither. However, the bast part of having a digital keyboard is that you can change and tweak it in which ever way, provided you have the software to support it.

GO Keyboard is one of the most popular digital keyboards out there. What makes it so popular? That's exactly what I was wondering too. With so many alternative Android keyboards out there, it's hard to fathom why some seem to be used more often than others.

What GO Keyboard has got going for it is the swipe feature and the language support (to a lesser degree). Although not in a very advanced way, GO does support a variety of languages, even ones that don't necessarily use a Roman script. What I mean about not being advanced is that new words are not learned the easy way, by simply typing them in and having the app learn them with a simple tap of a button. Instead you have a personal dictionary for which you will need to go deep into GO Keyboard's menu and record the new words. Quite tedious and time consuming. On the other hand, the swipe feature, combined with the word suggestion works really well.

Visually speaking, the default keyboard theme is dark gray with stark console style fonts. I quite like it. Alternatively, you can chose from a variety of fonts as well as entire themes. Unlike fonts, the themes are separate downloads and only integrate with GO Keyboard partially, as you will have a separate icon on the spring board, which you will need to access in order to change the specifics of the theme. The themes are also fairly large in size some reaching 30 megabytes.

A peculiar thing that I've noticed is the default supplemental lock screen. GO Keyboard includes a swipe-to-unlock lock screen & charge mode feature which isn't advertised on its product page. It seems to be reminiscent of a different app/build. Fortunately you can turn it off from the GO Keyboard menu as well as from the screen itself.

Speaking of the menu, GO Keyboard features a bounty of options and settings. From various display settings to input modes and adjustments, there are a ton of stuff to explore and tweak. In this respect, you will get tons more customization than with other alternative keyboards, let alone the standard included keyboard (unless your phone manufacturer is one step ahead in the competition).

Features

• Swipe Keyboard
• Predictive Typing (including emoji)
• Multiple languages and scripts
• Various Fonts
• Themes and plugins
• A plethora of customization options

Final Thoughts

I can't say I'm impressed with GO Keyboard. I do like the fact that they went far in order to maximize customization. However, the dictionary feature is rather clunky when it comes to learning. I find this to be a major obstacle, and the biggest problem to overcome in future versions. I would rather wait to see this fixed than dedicate to using this app.