When comparing SwiftKey vs Telegram, the Slant community recommends SwiftKey for most people. In the question“What are the best Android apps?” SwiftKey is ranked 21st while Telegram is ranked 32nd. The most important reason people chose SwiftKey is:
The prediction engine of SwiftKey is continuously being improved by using data from social networks, text messages or even emails from the user's device. Predictions appear above the keyboard as soon as a letter is typed. By adjusting to the user's writing habits and style, it really helps to save time when writing.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Highly acclaimed for its constantly improving prediction engine
The prediction engine of SwiftKey is continuously being improved by using data from social networks, text messages or even emails from the user's device. Predictions appear above the keyboard as soon as a letter is typed. By adjusting to the user's writing habits and style, it really helps to save time when writing.
Pro Can be customized with plenty of themes available
Swiftkey offers a wide range of different themes to add personality to your keyboard (some are free.. others paid for via in app purchases).
Pro Has a large number of languages available
Has 61+ languages available that can be downloaded. So chances are the languages you need will be available.
Pro Multiple simultaneous languages
Keyboard can integrate multiple languages into one seamless autocorrect engine.
Pro Can be resized to as large or as small as you want
You can choose between five different sizes to resize the keyboard.
Pro Can be undocked
The feature may seem odd but the ability to undock the keyboard is extremely useful in certain situations. For example when creating content or using difficult websites.
Pro Ad-free
SwiftKey is competely ad-free.
Pro Can be customized to have a numbers row in easy reach
Users can optionally display a number pad above the keyboard.
Pro Gestures typing or tap typing
Swiftkey supports both popular methods of typing. Either way the methods integrate perfectly with the predictions featured above the keyboard.
Pro Fast access to Emojis
When users type the name of the desired Emoji, a small list will come up where the right one can be selected.
Pro Free
Swiftkey is free to download and use, though there are in app purchases to unlock more features.
Pro Users can view in-depth usage statistics
SwiftKey will even provide you exciting data about how you type such as a heatmap.
The more you use SwiftKey, the more your heat map will transform from perfect circles into blobs where you tend to press. From the Heatmap you'll know where you tend to make mistakes and how SwiftKey is improved. Other stats provided include:
- Distance flowed in meters
- Keystrokes saved
- Typos corrected
- Words completed
Pro Supports Google voice dictation
Even though SwiftKey is a third party keyboard, Swiftkey still uses the preferred Google voice dictation.
Pro All the typing information saved from SwiftKey is synced across devices
Any learned words, phrases (inc. email addresses) will be backed up to the cloud and available across multiple devices.
Pro Various convenient layouts available, also for tablets
Among the layout choices is a split keyboard which anchors each half to the lower corners of the screen, where one would naturally hold a tablet device while typing, with the option to place a dedicated 10-key number pad in the unused space between them.
Pro Cloud backup
Pro Social Account Integration for learning new languages
Pro Free and convenient large file sharing
Copy/paste videos, gifs, images, geolocation, documents, and even executable files. Drag over files for practically any time up to 2GB in size. Images can be compressed, too.
Pro Free of cost
The application is available free of cost.
Pro Privacy focused
In addition to the end-to-end encryption [only in secret chats] that provides privacy to communications, the app also includes self destructing timers for chats, and the ability to permanently delete messages, yours and theirs, from your and their devices.
Pro Media messaging
Videos, gifs, images, geolocation, and documents.
Pro Channels for one way broadcasting
Broadcasting channels suitable for announcing things.
Pro Beautiful UI
Very customizable with a lot of clean looking options.
Pro Possible to send photos and videos without compression
Pro Supergroups of up to 200,000 people
In Supergroups, anyone along with admins can delete their messages from all sides. A message can be pinned to the top. All of the user's messages can be deleted by an administrator, and they can be banned and reported as well. Supergroups can have a public link (outside of Asia, due to high spam volumes), which is also a username.
Pro Two-step verification
You can set up an additional password to your account, which can be reset by your email. You don't have to use an email if you do not want to. If you lose access to your email or forget your password, you will be able to reset it via text message if your account is over seven days old and will receive it within a week (in case you recover anything before then).
Pro Secure
Pro Saved messages
You can write messages to yourself. You can write some notes, add links, and see everything across all your devices.
Pro Cloud chat keys are kept in different jurisdiction
Even though encryption used for cloud-based storage (e.g. Gmail, Facebook, iCloud) may not be as secure as end-to-end encryption or zero-knowledge storage, Telegram does the most that it can by holding keys to chats in different jurisdictions, requiring intergovernmental cooperation to obtain the keys. This is aside from whatever other security measures have been taken, of course.
Pro Multiplatform native client apps
There are native desktop, mobile and web client apps, that are optimized for speed and are light on memory usage.
Pro Open source client apps
Client apps are open source, making whole service more trustworthy.
Pro Unlimited storage
Unlimited number of files can be stored forever on the cloud. You can upload files up to 1.5 GB each.
Pro Voice and video messages
You can post voice and video messages if you are too lazy to write text messages.
Pro Group Voice Chat
This Discord-like feature adds to the interactivity of the application.
Pro Pinned Messages
You can pin messages to the top of groups or supergroups so members will see them when opening the group.
Pro Self-destruct messages
Messages in individual chats can be set to self destruct on a timer. They will disappear after the timer expires.
Messages in all new chats can be set to self-destruct with a global auto-delete timer in Settings > Privacy and Security > Auto-Delete Messages.
Pro Edit or delete messages after sending them
Pro Banned in China
Pro Save time with inline bots and link previews
Unfortunately, on the desktop videos don't play, but images are viewable without visiting popular websites like imgur and Instagram.
You can play YouTube videos and others within the app, so you don't need to embed code or anything.
With inline bots, such as @gif, @pic/bing, @vid/YouTube, etc, you can look things up without leaving the client or chat that you're in. Simply type the name and some keywords and wait for the results to load.
Pro @mentions
You can ping people to get their attention by @mentioning them.
Pro Desktop app handles HiDPI
The desktop app has a built in setting to scale the UI of the app up to 200% which allows for those with 4k monitors/screens to use the app without scaling issues.
Pro High quality calls
Uses the latest GPL audio codecs, such as Opus, an adaptative high-quality codec that supersedes AAC at any bitrate.
Pro Customer support is within the app
Although it's volunteer based, but still pretty top-notch if available, which it tends to be.
Pro Large groups can have channels called 'Topics'
Topics are now available in groups of 100+ members and have a sleek two-column layout and new buttons to quickly navigate.
A default topic called General is now in every topic group, holding the group’s service messages and previous message history.
Pro Popular in the USA
On SimilarWeb you can see that Telegram is on the top 15 among all communication apps.
Cons
Con Swipe recognition not as smart as Swype
It requires much more precision, if you miss one letter you have little chance of having the desired word, which makes it difficult to use in some situations.
Con Privacy, automatically saves unknown words
E.g. passwords entered in plain text fields, place names, people names etc.
Con High data bandwidth usage
This product consumes several MB per week, sometimes per day. The fact that SwiftKey doesn't fix the bug despite many similar reports is not really reassuring.
Con No language separation or weighing
If you load several languages, you can choose any keyboard for any of them, but it won't help the recognition algorithm, which insists on giving other language words in the most absurd situations.
Again, no help from their support to arrange the situation.
Con Cannot remove some options
You cannot remove the emojis or Info button from the keyboard.
Con Themes are in app purchases
Like most third party keyboards, Swiftkey offers tons of themes but of course they cost money and have to be purchased through the app.
Con The smallest layout is too big
Con High processor/memory usage makes it unusable on older devices
SwiftKey is extremely resource-intensive compared to many of its competitors, and will often lag even on high-end smartphones.
Con Predicting and inserting word combinations faulty
Recent update enabled Swiftkey to predict short word combinations. In principle this should be quite convenient, but so far it turns out this new algorithm is defective and way too aggressive. Too often it inserts combinations that are completely meaningless, or inserts English combinations in Dutch sentences or the other way around. Has almost doubled the amount of corrections needed.
Con Bought by Microsoft
Will undoubtedly lead to less innovation.
Con Not fully open source
Telegram has an open API and protocol free for everyone, but the backend software is not open source. Therefore 100% privacy can not be evaluated.
Con Can only be used with a phone number
It is not possible to activate and use Telegram by mail etc. You need a phone number.
Con Only "Secret Chat" messages are encrypted end to end
The only way to get end-to-end encryption (client-client) using Telegram is to use the Secret Chat function, anything through the service is server-client encrypted. Also secret chat is only implemented in the mobile apps, meaning there is no way to encrypt messages end-to-end when using the desktop client or the web browser client.
Con "Secret Chat" feature is not available for desktop client
Secret chats with end to end encryption are only available on mobile apps.
Con No source code sintax highlighting
Telegram does not have source code syntax highlighting, making it difficult to share code snippets.
Con Does not work for visually impaired
Doesn't work for visually impaired.
Con Does not support spherical 360° photos
Spherical 360° photos becoming more popular these days, but Telegram does not support such format.
Con Does not support text messaging
You can NOT make it your default text messaging App.