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Samsung Galaxy S6 comes with free Fleksy keyboard app for fast texting

The app used by Brazilian teen Marcel Fernandes Filho to set the Guinness world record for knocking out a text is free to Galaxy S6 users via Samsung Gifts.

Edward Moyer Senior Editor
Edward Moyer is a senior editor at CNET and a many-year veteran of the writing and editing world. He enjoys taking sentences apart and putting them back together. He also likes making them from scratch. ¶ For nearly a quarter of a century, he's edited and written stories about various aspects of the technology world, from the US National Security Agency's controversial spying techniques to historic NASA space missions to 3D-printed works of fine art. Before that, he wrote about movies, musicians, artists and subcultures.
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  • Ed was a member of the CNET crew that won a National Magazine Award from the American Society of Magazine Editors for general excellence online. He's also edited pieces that've nabbed prizes from the Society of Professional Journalists and others.
Edward Moyer
2 min read

fleksythemes.jpg
The Fleksy keyboard app, wearing a few different themes. The app can be had free by Samsung Galaxy S6 owners. Fleksy

Owners of Samsung's new Galaxy S6 smartphone can start training for the world speed-texting championships with no need to buy extra gewgaws -- except maybe some highly caffeinated energy drinks and a crate or two of screen cleaner.

That's because Samsung has partnered with Fleksy Keyboard to offer Fleksy's app free to Samsung users via the smartphone maker's Samsung Gifts program. Fleksy was the keyboard app used by Brazilian teen Marcel Fernandes Filho last November to shatter his own Guinness world record for "Fastest time to type a text message (SMS) on a touchscreen mobile phone."

It took Filho just 17 seconds to bang out the scintillating sentence, "The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human."

Last month, CNET's Scott Webster put together a list of 7 great keyboard apps for your Android phone or tablet and said of Flexsy that it "excels at providing a fast and accurate typing experience." The app normally costs $1.99 (£1.32, AU$2.48), though there's also a free trial version. The free Samsung Gifts offer also includes Fleksy's Modern premium theme set, so you can customize the look of your keyboard. And the offer includes users of the Galaxy S5 and Note 4 too.

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With its smartphone dominance of the last several years crumbling at the hands of Apple and, at the low end of the market, China's Xiaomi and India's Micromax, Samsung is trying to make a splash and regain consumers' interest with the Galaxy S6 launch at Mobile World Congress. Tossing in Fleksy couldn't hurt.

In addition to being available for Google's Android mobile operating system (the OS the Galaxy S6 runs on), there's a version of Fleksy for Apple's iOS as well.