8pen Android Typing App Reinvents The Keyboard (VIDEO)

Does it pain you to type on your smartphone's tiny keyboard? Are your messages error-laden? Do you love your phone's touch screen--but long for a physical QWERTY keyboard? 8pen, a typing application for Android devices, might be the solution you seek.

As 8Pen's creators point out, the original keyboard was made to fit two hands comfortably. But today we frequently find ourself typing on tiny multitouch devices, barely a few inches wide, with screens that are too small to type on comfortably, even with a single finger.

8Pen proposes that it's time we reinvented the keyboard with our mobile needs in mind--and that's exactly what the creative app does.

"If the keyboard was invented today for mobile devices, would it have looked the same?," the makers of 8Pen ask in a YouTube video. "Probably not. We need something new."

Aiming to provide a faster and more accurate means of composing text on a small touch screen, 8pen rejiggers the traditional keyboard layout and separates letters into four quadrants, arranged around a central point that functions as the space bar.

The typist navigates the 8pen "keyboard" by gesturing around the quadrants, rather than pecking at individual letters. The system is designed to mimic the feel of handwriting and even recognizes gestures for greater typing ease.

Watch the video (below) to see how 8pen works, then visit the8pen.com to learn more about this revolution in smartphone typing. Then share your thoughts about this app. Do you see 8pen as a much needed innovation, or are you satisfied with your smartphone's virtual keyboard? Let us know in the comments.

WATCH:

Comments

[Neil O]

01:56 PM on 01/09/2011

This isn't new. Researchers at NYU invented it back in the 1990's. They called it "quikwriting"

http://mrl.nyu.edu/~perlin/experiments/quikwriting/

So either 8pen is a spinoff or collaboration with NYU, or else 8pen has a serious IP problem.

[Joseph Czajkowski]

11:50 AM on 01/08/2011

I've been using this for about four hours and im pretty fast already.

[zridling]

06:08 AM on 01/08/2011

This is REALLY OLD NEWS. Wow, I'm even surprised at how bad HPost has become.

[BlueHorde]

09:34 PM on 01/07/2011

This looks like a inferior version of Graffiti(tm) invented in 1993 for the Casio Zoomer by PalmOne, which became Palm, Inc - makers of the first truly successful PDA, the Palm Pilot. Graffiti is much simpler to learn than 8pen because you already know the alphabet it is based on. Graffiti is already available for iPhone, iPad and Android devices. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffiti_%28Palm_OS%29

[MarauderF]

07:47 PM on 01/07/2011

Ain't gonna happen. QWERTY still being here shows us that - and it's designed to maximize separation of keystrokes, which is about the worst thing possible for your fingers.

[Eric Mitchell]

06:32 PM on 01/07/2011

Interesting

[starrigavan]

05:27 PM on 01/07/2011

I just have the feeling that we're missing something obvious. There has to be a better way to get information into a phone. Phones come with voice input already. Why aren't we working on better voice recognition?

[jsarets]

05:52 PM on 01/07/2011

We are working on better voice recognition. It's not so simple though, and it has the fundamental problem that it's not always desirable or appropriate (socially or professionally) to speak out loud in order to type.

Some now-obsolete PDAs used gestures based on handwriting, which is pretty obvious and leverages existing skills that just about everybody has. This is a reasonable solution, but our alphabet was designed for writing sequential letters next to each other on an expanse of paper.

The thrust of 8pen, as I see it, is to create a new alphabet that is optimized for writing each letter over top the previous letter on a compact area of touchscreen.

To ease the transition, the alphabet is not composed of arbitrary shapes that have to be memorized before they can be used (like our current alphabet). Instead, each shape is derived from methodical rules that the user can follow to produce the correct shape until the alphabet is fully memorized.

[LateForTheSky]

04:58 PM on 01/07/2011

And this is going to be sold to an American audience that refused to convert to the metric system?

[jsarets]

06:06 PM on 01/07/2011

We're an anti-collectivist nation highly reluctant to make decisions that by their nature affect everybody. Switching to the metric system is a big leap for us because as a standard of measure it only works if more or less everybody agrees to use it.

A choice of software keyboards is not something where we all have to agree in order for the choice to make practical sense. Each individual can choose the input method that works best for them, as there is no inherent penalty for using a less popular method.

In fact, choosing products in part because they are different is a prototypically American way of expressing our individuality through acts of consumerism.

[krs41]

10:59 PM on 01/07/2011

who cares about metric.

[LateForTheSky]

11:02 AM on 01/08/2011

Only those of us that are fortunate enough to travel out of the US.

[4TJefferson]

04:43 PM on 01/07/2011

What headline bait! This "reinvents" nothing.

[jsarets]

04:46 PM on 01/07/2011

I disagree. It's pretty novel. Everything so far has been based on a qwerty layout or on alphabet gestures. This is completely different.

[4TJefferson]

09:16 PM on 01/07/2011

Huh? Why are we still typing anything? Twenty (20) years ago T.I. said voice recognition was just around the bend....

[Manny Maurice]

02:33 PM on 01/07/2011

all i'm wondering is...is she French or Canadian :)? love the accent...

[ariando]

08:56 PM on 01/07/2011

My guess is from Hong Kong

[Jim8]

12:54 PM on 01/07/2011

What would a car look like if it were invented today? They are the width they are, streets and roads are the width they are, garages, just about all the rest of it because that is the wide two horses.

Nice to try to change the keyboard, but my prediction is that we are stuck with it as it is.

[BuleriaChk]

12:59 PM on 01/07/2011

Horses are the size they are because they were made to fit the crotches of human beings...:-)

[Pedestrian]

12:51 PM on 01/07/2011

I use Pinglish (Persian using English letters) a lot in my text messages ... I was wondering if any of you have used this or swype for non-English typing in an English text box?
I'm guessing that a system like this would work better than swype since it's not dictionary dependent?

[JimReed]

12:39 PM on 01/07/2011

With multitouch screens and touchpads coming out, why not start by resting 4 or 5 fingers on the screen. Then move one or some fingers in different directions. Instead of the program deciding what the gestures are, why not let the user? He can go into setup mode, touch the keyboard, and show how he wants to move for an A. Then all the other letters and numbers or special functions.

[HereinDC]

11:58 AM on 01/07/2011

I'm an iPhone owner.....and I saw in the comments people mentioning SWYPE.
Well, I went to the SWYPE website.....

DAMN! That is a great system. EXCELLENT! WOW!

APPLE needs to get that on their iPHONES PRONTO!

DAMN!

[michaelmarian]

01:51 PM on 01/08/2011

Yeah, my girlfriend on her iPhone dropped her jaw when she saw me use SWYPE on my Android. Similarly when I used Google Search with my voice

[BlackDemfromNH]

11:08 AM on 01/07/2011

Are they effin' kidding me??? "Easy"? "Intuitive"? That was confusing as HELL!!