Invention – 8Pen is a new way to “type” on a handheld device. Would you use it?

Manufacturers have tried many different ways to let users “type” on a handheld device. The tiny onscreen keyboard seen on most devices is the most obvious way, but it is not very fast.

Palm came up with Graffiti – a simplified kind of handwriting:

This video demonstrates voice input and Swype on an Droid X phone:

Blindtype lets you type approximately where the key on the keyboard should be, and it uses pattern recognition to figure out what you intended to type:

Even with all of these existing systems, people are still searching for the Holy Grail – a system that is even faster. Enter 8Pen, the latest of the new ideas for text input. It is described here:

This is perhaps the weirdest of all of them, and the least intuitive. (If you came upon an 8Pen input system and had never seen it before, you would have no idea what to do.) On the other hand, 8Pen claims that it is very quick:

The 8pen allows for the replacement of the conventional keyboard on all devices capable of detecting gestures, in particular mobile phones with touch screens, modern remote controls or game controllers. Its advantage lies mainly in the fact that it is possible to input text faster than using conventional layouts on small devices, while at the same time mimicking human hand-writing. Moreover, the simplicity of the gestures involved greatly reduces the problem of mistyping that frequently occurs with the classical layout due to the lack of space. For the same reason, it is possible to write without viewing, as only the central region is needed as a reference for starting and ending a movement.

Would you use something like this, or do you prefer one of the existing systems shown above?

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