Microsoft's Android keyboard puts files and people within reach

When you're chatting with someone on your phone, you may be doing a lot more than punching out text. Wouldn't it be nice if you could bring up important files and info without jumping between apps? Microsoft agrees. It recently released Hub Keyboard for Android, an add-on that folds a few common tasks into the keyboard itself. You can draw from your recent clipboard items, contacts and even your Office 365 documents. There's also built-in translation, in case you're speaking to someone who doesn't fully understand your native language.

Hub Keyboard is fairly barebones right now. It doesn't have autocorrect, swipe-to-type and other mainstays of many Android keyboards. This is one of Microsoft's Garage experiments, though, so it's easy to cut the company some slack. And remember, Microsoft just acquired SwiftKey -- there's no shortage of features it can add if Hub Keyboard takes off.