8pen is another attempt at bringing touch-typing to mobile devices
If you listened real close – in the video – you hear the narrator mention ‘handwriting’. That’s both why 8pens approach is pointed in the right direction and why this version of it misses the mark.
Selecting individual characters is terribly tedious.
Seriously, these things are COMPUTERS!
Electronic little brains that know all sorts of things about how we like our words are constructed and combined. Spell-checking and grammar checking have been around for decades. For as long as I can remember Microsoft Word could tell you at what Grade Level you were writing.
Yet – we’re still struggling with the 1-gesture-for-1-character writing model.
Makes me think we should drop all text input from these devices, limiting inputs to video and audio.
Swype – that is 1 gesture for 1 word – is much better than this in all respects from what I can tell, and I’ve tried both. It’s also better than the voice input because honestly there are times when you just can’t talk and need to be quiet but still want to use your phone.