I think this is poor user UI. I mean, in this day in age when so many people travel through different countries weekly on pleasure or business, their keyboard layout changes accordingly?
I don't think the keyboard changes UI - from the description it sounds like they augment the dictionary with words that other people near you are using in their vocabulary.
Still, it doesn't make a lot of sense that they need to do that many location requests. Why should where I'm standing right now affect what words are in my dictionary? It's a poor proxy at best, the words that I use in my language are a product of both where I grew up and where I spend my time. Where I happen to be standing does not always matter that much.
I wonder if bucketing users into "these people use the same words" would give better results?
> Why should where I'm standing right now affect what words are in my dictionary?
Since Swype has do to a lot of inference from your gestures, it seems reasonable that it may perform better when inferring proper names with some location awareness.
For example, if I am in a particular city, and wanted to type the name of a street where I am.
I am not saying that's a feature I find compelling; it does sound reasonable though. Letting the user chose this behavior (and the permission), would be best.
That doesn't make much sense.