Last week, the ingenius text input system Swype opened its beta for the Android platform — for free — and so I immediately downloaded a copy.

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Swype eliminates the need to tap out individual letters when typing on a touchscreen device. Instead, you glide your finger from letter to letter, forming words without your fingertip ever leaving the screen. It’s so elegant and fast that one Swype user even broke the Guinness World Record for fastest text messaging, a move that was famously documented in a recent Samsung commercial.

I’ve always preferred physical keyboards to their touchscreen counterparts, but after playing around with the Swype input system for a few days I’ve gotten hooked. I even demonstrated the new system to a few of my iPhone-carrying friends and even they admitted that they were impressed.

If you are a proud Android phone carrier like myself, go download a copy at http://beta.swype.com/. Hurry up, because the free download won’t be around for much longer!

P.S. — Swype is not available for the iPhone, but they say that a version is in development. The iPhone once had a decent alternative in an app called ShapeWriter; however, it has recently been pulled from the App Store due to SDK restrictions.