We’ve talked a lot about Swiftkey as one of the top keyboards on the planet, especially when you use it for 5 minutes and realize that it’s smarter than you. Well today, in celebration of their 500,000 download and it being Black Friday, you can snag the keyboard for $1.99 which is half the normal price.  If you aren’t familiar with Swiftkey, just understand that it falls under the “predictive text” category which essentially means it does a fantastic job of predicting the next word in the sentence you may be typing.  It’s not a Swype-styled keyboard, you actually have to press the buttons, but it does an unbelievable job of getting you to your final output with ease.

Download Link

I have no idea why that Android is hiding behind a giant turkey, but that’s beside the point.  It’s Thanksgiving everyone!  I hope you all have family to relax with, food to stuff with, and NFL to get physical with as you gorge on massive amounts of yummies.  Today marks a day of mourning for your favorite belt and jeans that will no longer be wearable after you crush that 3rd turkey sandwich.  Have a great time everyone!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Oh, and feel free to drop photos of your Thanksgiving spreads in the comments.  I always enjoy seeing how others get down on days like this.  Be safe!

The Nexus S finally broke cover and made an appearance in the wild running the next version of Android aka Gingerbread.  While this is another tipster with zero camera skills, at least  some stuff is confirmed like the new grey/black notification bar and green highlights.  Other than that, we can see that the device is indeed a Samsung, will be stuck on  T-Mobile (seriously?) and has a newly squared off launcher that differs from the rounded version seen on Froyo.  And these pictures were taken just 2 days ago, so this puts us another step closer to launch.

Ton of additional pics after the break.  

Before you all start digging into piles of stuffing, how about one last pot stirrer?  We had a few minutes of spare time and decided to sneak a peak at our Google Analytics which have been known to feature some of the new versions of Android floating around in the wild.  We had seen Android 3.0.1 (Honeycomb) in the past, but when we put up a range of dates we noticed something interesting.  Traffic coming from an Android 3.0 device spiked on October 22nd and hadn’t made an appearance any other day prior.

Why the 22nd you ask?  It just so happens that the giant Gingerbread statue was unveiled on Google’s campus that very same afternoon.  We also ran a story that day confirming Gingerbread as Android 2.3 due to a slippage of a Googler on a support forum.  So what’s the deal then?  Maybe we caught some Honeycomb testers looking to see what kind of press their Gingerbread statue received?  Certainly looks that way.

Update:  The second spike on October 26th just so happens to be the first day we heard about a Nexus One follow-up device running Gingerbread.  Coincidence?

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Can you think of a better way to send you all off into a long food filled weekend than with a couple of quick rumors?

The first has to do with those pictures above which is rumored to be the Motorola Olympus, a device headed to AT&T some time early next year.  Well, if you spend any time cruising through the 8,000 Android forums out there, then you may have stumbled across a few threads that have users also referring to it as the “Etna“.  Apparently “Etna” is the code name for the Verizon version and fits nicely into the large mountain theme that Moto chose for this round of devices.  From here forward, we’ll do our best to keep the names separated, but all signs now point to them being the same exact device only running on different networks.  Expect Blur, Android 2.2 and a Tegra 2 packed inside unless a miracle happens and Gingerbread bakes itself on board at the last minute.

The second rumor has to do with a device that seems to be topping everyone’s list for yearly upgrades, the Incredible HD.  The Inc HD, which gained some buzz after a ridiculously rumored original launch date of November 23rd was mentioned, is definitely not coming this month and more than likely won’t see December either.  We had already heard from a VZW player that it had been delayed until the first part of the year and today we’re hearing it again.  Store managers have apparently caught wind of either our site or are hearing it from higher up the chain that it will definitely be a 4G LTE device and not seeing the light of day until January at the earliest.

Recap!  Motorola Etna is what we all care about now.  The Incredible HD is confirmed for the 10th time to be real and won’t be here until January.

Cheers Bob!

The Android Market is starting to see quite a few new features added and one of them, coming early next week is the ability for users to filter apps by rating.  Developers will have to start specifying  if their apps are for “All”, “Pre-teen”, “Teen”, or “Mature” audiences.  This feature has been requested by enough people that the Android team decided to implement it starting November 30th.  You’ve got to enjoy watching the Android Market evolve into a true iOS competitor.

We were already tipped to the phone deals that Verizon would have over the weekend, but it looks like they aren’t stopping  there.  If you have been waiting to purchase accessories for any of your Droid phones, then you may be interested in Big Red’s new “Essentials” packs that include just about every meaningful accessory you could ask for.  In the Droid X pack above, you get an HDMI multimedia dock (our review), car mount, wall charger, vehicle charger and extra HDMI cable for under $100, which is a lot cheaper than buying all of that stuff separately.   There is also a Droid 2 pack for $79 which includes a multimedia dock (our review), car mount, wall charger, vehicle charger, and a stereo headset.  Not bad right?

Droid 2 and D2 Global Pack | Droid X Pack | Droid Music Pack | Incredible Packs

Cheers Atomicsunset!