SwiftKey v4.5 was first introduced back in December. That update was released as a beta, but perhaps more important — it was one that added support for emoji. Also included in that update was an optional number row. While the beta releases are made available for all, they do have to be sideloaded, which means the update process is not as automatic as compared to the Play Store experience.
That said, a new update has arrived for the SwiftKey v4.5 beta release today. As in the past, the APK can be downloaded from the SwiftKey blog. This time around the update has brought some improvements dealing with emoji. There was also more than a handful of bug fixes as well as one item listed in the known issues section.
Taking care of the known issue in the beginning, that one deals with how “it is still not always possible to insert a new line in some apps.” Otherwise, the improvements surrounding the emoji experience are as follows;
- Addition of a “recently used” emoji tab to display previously chosen icons
- Smart emoji layout now adapts to the amount of space on the screen
- Missing emoji from first emoji tab now reinstated
Some of the other items mentioned included fixes for some force close issues, and about how the Twitter personalization was updated (after Twitter updated the API). With those items all mentioned, the remaining items associated with this beta update are all dealing with bug fixes. The list includes some items dealing with emoji, some language related, some dealing with 7-inch devices and a mention of Kit Kat. The full list of bug fixes is as follows;
- Always have emoji at least as secondary on IMEGoKey (eg allows you to insert emoji in Instagram)
- Interim menu not being dismissed after locking/unlocking the screen
- Enabling split landscape numpad in 7″ devices
- Updates to Kannada and Malayalam languages from user feedback
- Fixed odd number row issue in Azerty Nederland keyboard layout
- Added conjunt consonants to six Indic layouts (Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, Kannada and Telugu)
- Improved behaviour on web fields in KitKat
- Missing ѝ in Bulgarian layouts
- Layout improvements in all languages (number row duplicates, new characters, etc)
- Notifying the user if a download fails due to insufficient storage
- Changed hotmail.com to outlook.com on the @ key in “To” email fields
SOURCE: SwiftKey Blog
