When comparing Gboard - the Google Keyboard vs Weather Timeline, the Slant community recommends Weather Timeline for most people. In the question“What are the best Material Design apps?” Weather Timeline is ranked 9th while Gboard - the Google Keyboard is ranked 14th. The most important reason people chose Weather Timeline is:
Offers choice of weather information sources between Weather underground (recommended), Dark Sky, YR.no, OpenWeatherMap, World Weather Online and SMHI (Sweden).
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Swipe support
The Google Keyboard supports swiping along the keyboard to spell out whole words.
Pro Learns preferred words
After using a gesture a few times and clicking the correct word, Google Keyboard learns that the gesture should result in the word you've manually selected as the correct word. Swype doesn't seem to learn this, so even after 100 times clicking 'this' instead of 'thesis', it still produces 'thesis', where Google Keyboard learns that you meant to say 'this'.
Pro Material Design
Google Keyboard has material design themes the user can skin the keyboard with.
Pro Swipe to punctuation
Hold down the key in the lower left hand corner and a keyboard if punctuation appears. Swipe over to the one you want, lift your finger, and the original keyboard pops back. It's very fast, and makes it much easier to spot the punctuation mark you want - instead of trying to squint at the secondary symbols in the keys.
Pro 100% free from Google
This keyboard is not a free trial nor will it hold back any new features to sell you a paid version. The keyboard is completely 100% free.
Pro Minimalistic design
While other keyboard options may be very functional, their visual design tends to differ from the rest of your Google device. The Google Keyboard was designed by Google and it looks like it.
Pro Fast, low memory usage
Alternative keyboards tend to suck up system resources, often making them nearly unusable on older phones. Google Keyboard is very quick to open when typing and the keys rarely lag.
Pro Has built-in Google search
The keyboard has button that allows searching Google straight from the keyboard, and use the search results in the currently used app.
Pro Emoji search
The GBoard has an emoji search that's very convenient, saves time looking for a specific one if you don't know/remember what category it's in.
Pro Dynamic floating preview
The dynamic floating preview appears while gesture typing. Most gesture keyboards only show the preview above the keyboard in the suggested corrections. The dynamic floating preview is great because it makes it easier to gesture type by keeping your eyes focused on what you are typing.
Pro Can use alternative layouts not just QWERTY
For those that are used to typing on a Dvorak keyboard or prefer not to need multiple key presses to access special symbols they can enable these as additional quick switch options. Using the English PC layout for example gives the user a number row.
Pro One-handed mode
Makes it easier to type with no more than a thumb.
Pro Suggestions don't get worse over time
Google keyboard does not promise to be as "smart" as other keyboards besides offering a personalized dictionary. Surprisingly this is actually a good thing for some because with many "smart" keyboards predictions and corrections actually worsen over time. With Google Keyboard the experience will remain constant because it requires you to manually "touch again to save" before it changes your personal dictionary. This prevents mistakes from becoming part of your personal dictionary.
Pro 120 languages support
Pro GIF support
Pro Cloud backup
Pro Pre-installed on most Android devices
Most Android devices have GBoard installed.
Pro Choice of data sources
Offers choice of weather information sources between Weather underground (recommended), Dark Sky, YR.no, OpenWeatherMap, World Weather Online and SMHI (Sweden).
Pro Simple, elegant, unique UI
Once loaded the first thing the weather app does is present the user with temperature and conditions of saved places. If more information is needed, clicking on one of the places will give information about rain, sunset times, wind and give an overview of the upcoming week with possibility to go even deeper and get more information about each day hour by hour.
All information is presented in a logical, straightforward manner with a Material Design inspired look.
Pro Great notifications
Notifications are highly customizable, and have separate folders and unfolded layouts that show the right information at the right place.
Pro Excellent widgets
A large number of widgets are available, and each of them are customizable down to the details.
Pro Weather alerts
Sends a daily notification at a set time about a general forecast or to remind you to take your umbrella (if needed).
Pro Allows checking weather years in advance
A feature called Time Machine allows checking weather forecast years into the future.
Pro Persistent notifications
The weather is always at the bottom of the notifications stack, making it easy to glance at the weather.
Pro Android Wear support
Cons
Con Typing is not always smooth
Sometimes typing lags.
Con Horrible Word Prediction
Unable to remember frequently used words.
Con Adds periods in random places and there is no way to disable it.
Con Lacks some features
Does not add contacts, does not save clipboard, and doesn't show the correct spelling of words or underline them, even though it's in settings.
Con Very little customization
Google Keyboard allows you to enable or disable
vibrate on keypress
sound on keypress
popup on keypress
double space period
These are pretty useful basic settings but most other keyboards offer more options. Google also allows you to edit the personal dictionary.
Con Restricted customization (few skins)
Con Terrible layout in landscape mode
Con Takes up a lot of storage
If you are using multiple languages and predictive text, the app can use up a lot of storage.
Con Prediction isn't as good as SwiftKey
Con Uses a lot of RAM
Con Symbol order is (slightly) different from full-sized QWERTY keyboard
Instead of the first four symbols being !@#$%^& (i.e. shift+1 through 7 on a QWERTY keyboard), they're @#$%&. This is fine if you know the symbols in your password, but if you're like me and you just hold the SHIFT key and type a long number, you'll have to consult a real keyboard to figure out your password.
Con Other languages not available in transliteration mode
Unlike Google Indic Keyboard where you can type by transliteration, compact, and handwriting, you only get the fixed layout for other languages.
Con It doesn't have arrow keys
Several times it is much better to navigate through a long text using arrow keys than scrolling and tapping the place where you want the cursor to be. SwiftKey has arrow keys (via an option), Gboard has not.
Con Google, via the keyboard app, might be collecting data on us that it then sells to third parties which in turn can use that data to influence us
Con Not available
Con Need to find the data provider that suits your location
In a perfect world, all providers would provide the same level of accuracy. But in actuality, one service will have better predictions than others for your region.