New video gives us an early look at third-party iOS 8 keyboards

One of the best features that Apple added with iOS 8 is something that Android users have enjoyed for a long time: The ability to download and install third-party keyboard apps that make typing on your phone vastly easier than with Apple’s default keyboard. One third-party keyboard app called TouchPal released an alpha version of its upcoming app for iOS 8 on Friday and AppleInsider has posted a short demonstration video that shows us the app’s basic features.

As you can see in the video over at AppleInsider’s website, TouchPal has a lot of the standard swipe-based typing features that we’ve come to expect from third-party keyboards and it also has a feature that lets you swipe up on a letter in the top row of the keyboard to make it type its corresponding number. This differs slightly from SwiftKey, where you hold and press one of the keys in the top row to get it to type in a number.

Be sure to check out AppleInsider’s page for the full video. We’ve also embedded an earlier video posted by the team at TouchPal below.