GLOBAL – How can you improve the speed of your text input on a touch-screen device? Swype might offer the answer and it’s just become available from the beta labs. Instead of tapping on each individual letter, you simply move your finger from letter to letter in order to spell out the complete word. Swype looks at your input path and adds the most likely word. If it isn’t certain then it gives you a choice. The video below shows you how it works.

Swype comes from a Seattle company founded by Cliff Kushler and Randy Marsden. Cliff is the co-inventor of the T9 predictive text system in use on 2.4 billion phones across the world. Nokia became a funding partner for the company last December and now we get to test the fruits of that.

The beta release is supported on S60 5th edition touch-screen devices: the Nokia 5800 Xpressmusic, Nokia 5230, Nokia N97, N97mini and the Nokia X6. You can find out more and download the beta software here.