Having had a Motorola Droid for a few months now, I’ve sampled my fair share of applications-all of which have been free to download, and I’ve purchased a couple of full versions after trying them. One thing they’ve had in common is they all came from the Android Market—until now.

A fellow nerd encouraged me to open my Droid to third-party downloads, something I’ve been reluctant to do. Being that the Android OS is open source, I feel the opportunity for a breach or virus is a legitimate concern, and haven’t found any reason to risk infection or worse, especially since many free applications are absolute garbage.

That said, I ventured outside my comfort-zone with a little coaxing, and I’m glad I did. I downloaded Swype, and to say I’m impressed is an understatement. The keyboard is easy to figure out, and the best part is it works well one-handed. The predictive text is pretty good at ciphering what I’m trying to say, and I don’t consider myself exceptionally coordinated. There have been a few instances where I have switched back to the regular android keyboard (usually if I am using a lot of non-words, like a ticker symbol), but I always find myself switching back.

The more I use the Swype keyboard, the faster and more accurate I become with it. It feels partly because I’m more proficient as I use it, but also it seems to be learning a little, especially as I add words to the dictionary. (Press and hold the correctly spelled word to find the option to do this).

In summary, I’m really impressed with the Swype application, and even more so, since it is still in beta. Droid-X will come with Swype as a native application.  I can’t wait to see if it gets even better.

NOTE:  I blogged this on my phone, while sitting on a flight :-)