Looking to spruce up your grammar and cut down on typos? Grammarly might fit the bill. It's a cloud-based AI-powered word-checking service, and it's pretty straightforward: It scans what you've written, highlighting any mistakes or misspellings. It's long been available in the form of Chrome extension and Microsoft Office add-0n for a few years now, and starting this week, it's shipping as a keyboard for Android.
"By 2018, 50 percent of workplace communication and collaboration will happen through mobile apps. But typing on your phone is awkward and imprecise—we’ve all fallen victim to the dreaded textfail [sic] at one time or another," Ayan Mandal, Vice President of Product at Grammarly, wrote in a blog post. "That’s why we built the Grammarly Keyboard, a personal editor that integrates seamlessly with all your mobile apps and your mobile browser. Whether you’re responding to an important client’s email, posting a Facebook message for the world to see, or texting your boss, you’ll always look polished and professional, even on your phone."
With the Grammarly keyboard on Android, you get word-replacement suggestions and ideas for improving your grammar, style, and vocabulary. (The company says it implements encryption and "other measures," such as automatic blocking in credit card fields and other forms marked as sensitive, to protect privacy.) Basically, the goal's to clean up your sentence structure and correct any glaring errors -- think of it as a better, more context-aware autocorrect.
The Grammarly keyboard's available for free from the Google Play Store. You can configure it to American English or British English and add words to a personal dictionary, but it's currently pretty barebones. The team's already hard at work on the next version, though, which it says will support glide input.