SwiftKey on Android is not a good Android keyboard. In fact, it might be the worst one out there.

I was a Windows phone user for years before I finally made the switch to an Android smartphone. I had used everything from the HTC 7 Mozart all the way up to the HP Elite x3 as my daily driver. Back in 2010, when I made the switch from my iPhone 3GS to my HTC 7 Mozart, the keyboard was an obvious standout feature. It was so good. Windows Phone 8.1 only improved the keyboard with the introduction of shape writing and better autocorrect, and although the Windows 10 Mobile keyboard was a little sub-par when it first launched, it didn't take long for that old behavior to return, maintaining Windows Phone's number one spot for best mobile OS keyboard. But in 2017, that doesn't matter. But Microsoft made great keyboards, so I would at least expect it to have nailed the fundamentals on Android. It already has a great app launcher, superb Edge browser, Cortana, Outlook, and many more fantastic Android apps to help tie over any Windows phone converts. SwiftKey? Not so much ... Best VPN providers 2020: Learn about ExpressVPN, NordVPN & more The SwiftKey experience

Look at how bad SwiftKey is at showing key popups when typing at a relatively fast speed on Android compared to the Google keyboard. pic.twitter.com/iwAEYNyWMx — Zac Bowden (@zacbowden) 5 December 2017 SwiftKey is Microsoft's official Android keyboard. There are just so many things I don't like about SwiftKey on Android, including its slow, laggy performance that often drops below 30 frames per second (FPS) when scrolling through the keyboards settings. Keep in mind, all my experiences I write about here are on a OnePlus 5T and Samsung Galaxy S8, two of the most powerful Android flagships from 2017. Of course, my issues and opinions on this keyboard may differ from yours. These are my personal experiences. Let's start with the typing experience, which sucks. Using the shape-writing function feels slow; the shape writing line animation is often laggy, and the keyboard is terrible at keeping up pace with key-popups. Key-popups are another thing that is disabled by default. Every other keyboard I've tried on Android can display key-popups at pace, no matter how fast I type. I find key-popups to be an integral part of all virtual keyboards, as it gives you visual feedback that you've hit the button you were aiming for. If the popups aren't able to keep up, it throws me off my typing pattern, and makes for a terrible user experience. The actual appearance of the SwiftKey keyboard looks like something out of 2008. Sure, SwiftKey supports themes, and "some" of the themes available look OK. But the default themes are anything but. A lot of them look dated, from back when it was trendy for Android keyboard to look like crap. The keyboard supports custom themes, but I wouldn't call that anything special considering the "custom" element is just changing the keyboard's background. There's no color configuration options, just the background. Other keyboards have way better custom theming support. There are much better Android keyboards available I've also noticed that the "stats" feature in the SwiftKey app never works. No matter what device I try it on. This is apparent on stable and beta releases of SwiftKey.