Next Keyboard for iPhone Review

After a very successful KickStarter campaign and a long wait, Next Keyboard finally launched for iPhone with a lot of anticipation. It quickly rose to the second top paid app in the App Store. The keyboard comes almost one year after Apple allowed third party keyboard in the App Store, but it's got a lot of features in it that make it worth checking out.

The Good :)

There's a lot that's good about Next Keyboard. The first thing worth pointing out is its many beautiful themes. There are currently 14 themes available. My favorite is the Kickstarter keyboard. There's also a Classic keyboard that looks like the default one on iPhone. Typing also sounds better with Next Keyboard, you'll have to try that out for yourself.

All themes are currently free and they may become paid later, so if you are ever going to buy the keyboard then now's the time. The keyboard also has built in animated stickers as an alternative to emoji and they do look pretty cool. They also are currently free and may become a paid in-app purchase in the future.

Looking good isn't enough though. Next Keyboard is more powerful than Apple's keyboard in a few other helpful ways.

One of the most useful features is quick cursor control. It's really similar to the one found in Fleksy except this one shows you a preview of the sentence above the keys which is really helpful. Also swiping backwards on the backspace key erases the whole word. Again this is very similar to Fleksy but a big improvement over the default iPhone keyboard.

Other than the nice built in emoji and stickers panel, the keyboard suggests emoji for you as you type. For example typing lol suggests the laughing emoji to replace the word. Why send words when you can send emoji and stickers, right?

Next Keyboard also fixes the shift key problem. When the shift key is pressed the letters are capitalized. Most third party keyboards as well as the default keyboard on iOS 9 have this feature, but it's a nice little improvement to have.

Also a cool little feature is that when you hold on the period button you can insert other punctuation signs. It's a small feature but it helps.

The Bad :(

I really enjoy using Next Keyboard, but a few things are putting me off. The biggest problem I have is that the keyboard can only type in English. I frequently need to type in Arabic but I can't do that with Next Keyboard.

Another really annoying problem is that autocorrect is really inaccurate sometimes. The keyboard sometimes 'corrects' real words into another word and that can be frustrating. However, I imagine that over time their current autoincorrect issue will be fixed.

Frustrating

There is one thing though that may put off a lot of people, and that is price. The keyboard costs $4.It is a great app but the price is really high for a keyboard, especially considering that alternatives like Fleksy which don't have the problems I mentioned above are free to download.

Bottom Line

Next Keyboard doesn't feel as robust to use as other keyboards on the App Store today. However this is only the first version. The team behind the keyboard is trusted as they've made some very amazing apps on the App Store. So although the first version isn't too stable, and the keyboard crashes more than it should, there will definitely be updates in the future to fix this.

Next Keyboard may soon become the most popular keyboard on the App Store if the issues are resolved and the limitations are overcome. If you'd like to take advantage of the free themes and stickers and want to support the developers to improve the keyboard then now may be the right time to buy it. If you're not sure yet then it may be worth waiting a few weeks till the keyboard gets better.

Let's wait and see what comes Next.

-Download Next Keyboard for iPhone $3.99