Swype Beta has been available since 2010 and could be installed on anything as far as I know. It required signing up via email and downloading an APK though. I'm not sure why they didn't publicize it more.

>How come people are still talking about Swype?

In my opinion, it's far superior to the native Android implementation and Swiftkey.

Swiftkey Flow is a bit more responsive than Swype and I switched to it for a while to see if it could unseat Swype as my prime keyboard, but I eventually found major problems with its accuracy and predictions. I should have kept a list, there were certain words that proved impossible to enter to matter how precise the input. I also found that it occasionally (often enough to be irritating) refused to function as a "swipable" keyboard.

The Android keyboard is pretty bare bones relative to both Swiftkey Flow and Swype.

Both the Android keyboard and Swiftkey were lacking some very useful shortcuts present Swype for launching a numberic keypad, capitalization and text selection/manipulation.

SwiftKey definitely has its flaws too. There are some persistent bugs that just don't get fixed. I find it very odd that companies with products so popular act as if they're abandoned.

I think it says a lot that I was genuinely surprised when Swype finally showed up on Play. I'd written it off as forever sideloaded and not totally compatible. Likewise, I have no expectation of niggling bugs in SwiftKey ever being fixed.

As I recall, both Swype and Swiftkey annoyingly expired their beta packages from time to time and both used confusing non/not-quite mobile pages for sign up and to download updates.

Baffling.

It was a big deal when SwiftKey and Android 4.2 implemented its own version of "Swype" and both promoted it. I've used all three KBs and prefer Swype because it's the most accurate for me.

Not being available in Play store doesn't mean you can't get it. You just go to their website, sign for the beta, then you download the apk. ANYONE could do this.