Microsoft's Swiftkey Beta Introduces An Animated Emoji- Puppets
Over the past year or so, Microsoft has made a lot of improvements to its SwiftKey keyboard app on Android, and most of them were actually useful. But if what you really wanted was a silly new feature, today's update might be for you.
Microsoft has updated the beta version of its keyboard app on Android, bringing it to version 7.3.4.17, and it includes a new feature called Puppets. It works in a somewhat similar way to Apple's Animoji, which animate emoji using your facial expressions. Rather than using emoji, though, Microsoft lets you animate puppets in the shape of animals, including a panda, a cat, a dog, an owl, and a dinosaur.
In addition to using your facial expressions to animate the puppets' faces, SwiftKey can also record your voice, so you can send video messages as if they were being spoken by you. It's possible to record up to 30 seconds, and the result is sent as a video file, so it should work in most apps. The feature is still in early testing, so some improvements should be made before it's considered good enough for everyone to use.
Microsoft said this functionality would work on all Android devices which support the SwiftKey app, and will begin rolling out in the near future.
To begin using Puppets immediately, Android smartphone owners can download the SwiftKey Beta from the Google Play Store.