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Popular 'Gboard' Keyboard App Has Had a Broken Spell Checker For Months
The popular Gboard keyboard app for iOS and Android devices has a fundamental flaw. According Reddit user SurroundedByMachines, the red underline has stopped appearing for incorrectly spelled words since November of last year -- and it doesn't appear to be limited to any one device. Issues with the spell checker have been reported on multiple devices across Android and iOS. A simple Google search brings up several different threads where people have reported issues with the feature.
What's more is that nobody at Google seems to get the memo. The Reddit user who first brought this to our attention filed several bug reports, left a review, and joined the beta channel to leave feedback there, yet no response was given. "Many people have been having the issue, and it's even been escalated to the community manager," writes SurroundedByMachines. Since the app has over 500 million downloads on the Play Store alone, this issue could be frustrating a lot of users, especially those who use their phones to send work emails or write documents. Have you noticed Gboard's broken spell checker on your device? If so, you may want to look into another third-party keyboard, such as SwiftKey or Cheetah Keyboard.
What's more is that nobody at Google seems to get the memo. The Reddit user who first brought this to our attention filed several bug reports, left a review, and joined the beta channel to leave feedback there, yet no response was given. "Many people have been having the issue, and it's even been escalated to the community manager," writes SurroundedByMachines. Since the app has over 500 million downloads on the Play Store alone, this issue could be frustrating a lot of users, especially those who use their phones to send work emails or write documents. Have you noticed Gboard's broken spell checker on your device? If so, you may want to look into another third-party keyboard, such as SwiftKey or Cheetah Keyboard.
you kept with the green robot and now you see the consequences of duopoly.
Who is that "you"? And what should those guilty people have done instead? Specifically buy a product with a tiny market share for the purpose of supporting a collectively diverse phone ecosystem? And how would they have coordinated their buying decisions to make sure not to create any kind of duopoly?
See, you're just blaming a large vague group of people while really all we're seeing is market forces. Numbers show that as the mobile market grows, a vast majority of people prefer higher quality and more cost-effective devices, while a somewhat steady group of loyal brand lovers prefer a unified if a bit stiffled ecosystem that comes with a higher price tag and less advanced devices. There's nothing of significance in between because there's no offering that is more valuable or attractive than the main two.
There could have been a viable third option (Windows phone), and anyone who has owned one will tell you that the metro tiles and the overall experience was great on mobile devices. But once again Microsoft squandered that opportunity by failing to provide an attractive and convenient platform for developers. You can't really blame customers for that.
lucm, indeed.