I bought 8Pen for my Nexus One last night, an alternative, and pretty revolutionary, input method for Android. But how does it stack against normal soft keyboards?
8Pen’s input method comprises from four sectors with stacks of characters on each side. In the middle, the big black circle is the spacebar. You start each gesture from the spacebar, and then you circle around the 4 sectors depending if the character you want to reach is 1st or 2nd, or 3rd, or 4th. So to type “a”, which is the first character in its stack, you only circle around its immediate sector, while to reach “r”, which is 2nd in its character stack, you must circle around two sectors. Difficult to explain, but this video can make it clearer.
This is obviously a very innovative way of looking at typing, although there is a steep learning curve, mostly because the characters stack order is based on how much they’re used in the English language. So for example, for “a”, which is used a lot, it’s just a 1-sector long gesture, while for the less-used “z”, it’s 4 sectors long. I believe that it’s possible to learn this system in about 1-2 days if you work it. I learned where all the vowels are stacked within 10 minutes for example.
The system allows for custom gestures, so for example you can create your own quick gesture for whole words or sentences that you use a lot.
I worked with 8Pen since I bought it yesterday, but I can’t imagine this system being able to get faster than actual typing. Actually, this is not entirely true. 8Pen can be faster than a soft keyboard, but only if the screen is smaller than 3.5″. In that case, single-handed operations like 8Pen are possibly faster than the error-proneness of a tiny soft keyboard. But on larger screens, especially on 3.7″+ screens and for people with somewhat small fingers, Swype or a normal soft-keyboard are possibly faster than 8Pen. But this is for people who are after Guinness records to clarify for us. Overall, I’d say that 8Pen is faster than hand-writing, and much faster than Palm’s Graffiti, and it holds a definite advantage in smaller screens.
The other advantage of 8Pen, that could prove major, is that it’s blind-friendly. And not just for blind people, but also for users who can walk and type without looking at a screen. A lot of youngsters were able to do that with T9 back in the day, and it’s certainly possible with 8Pen, while it’s not as easy with any other touch system. The jury is still out on BlindType, since there’s no available version for it yet, but also BlindType doesn’t seem to be as friendly typing both blind and with a single hand — something that’s possible with the 8Pen. Only thing missing from 8Pen is vibration when the finger touches the “spacebar” circle, so we get a clue as to where the starting point is.
So what to use? I think that all these systems have their place. Soft keyboard if you’re not keen to learn new things or your fingers are small enough, Swype and BlindType if you’re after speed and flexibility, and 8Pen if you’re working on a small screen and you’re interested in single-hand blind-typing.
I just learnt about 8pen on some other site today, and thought it looked … weird. I’m currently using SlideIT, which is kinda like Swype, but I’m not totally happy with it, mainly because slide keyboards are highly dependant on good dictionaries, and the one provided for my language just sucks. Compound words? Forget it. Actually typing in words would be better, but when you type in a word with SlideIT, it will auto-correct it for you to Something Completely Different, unless you are careful.
How is this for non-English? Does it let you write å?
Swype makes it pretty easy to add words to its auto correction database — too easy for me: mine now has all of my common mispellings.
It’s fairly easy to do in SlideIt as well, but in a compound-heavy language, it just isn’t worth it. The main problem is that it insists on inserting a space between words, even when none is called for. There’s actually a setting for this — “automatically insert space” — but either it works differently or not at all. Perhaps I should just file a bug report.
Yes, it lets you write all these accented characters by pressing and holding the gesture of the equivalent English character before returning to the Spacebar circle. It didn’t have Greek character support though (my native language), just Northern European characters with diacritics.
Edited 2010-11-03 22:25 UTC
It can’t be long before they add support for other languages. 8pen were probably either all English-speakers, or aiming for the greatest exposure first. I expect the next releases will just have different layouts for having diacriticals in the default positions, but Greek can’t be far off. It would require a lot of research and focus testing, I’d think. I’m curious to see how they do Asian language support, if they ever do it.
what keyboard *does* have greek language support? Apart from stock android and htc_ime, i haven’t found any. Swype supposedly supports it, but not on the user-downloadable beta versions…
That’s the first thing I thought when I saw the demo for this app… how the hell would you know when your finger got back to the center circle without looking at it?
Anyway, I still might give it a try, because my fingers are just too damn fat for the default keyboard layout(s), and I often end up hitting the wrong key because of it. I need to find an alternative.
Did you try MessagEase? I had a quicker time picking that up than 8pen.
I installed MessageEase and while it’s indeed easier to pick up than 8Pen, it’s only just as fast, because it requires both taps and swipes. Meaning, that you need to lift your finger all too often, and then switching from one mode to another, and that takes time. Overall, I’d say that 8Pen is better in smaller screens than MessageEase, and could easily support blind-typing, something that’s not as easy on Message Ease. On the plus side, MessageEase is simply easier to learn.
After trying both for a few minutes, I have the opposite experience. I probably should have watched the tutorial first, but even then, MessagEase was just confusing.
TenGO
Those who owned an iPaq will remember it (and miss it). The rest of you swallow this: you know NOTHING about virtual keyboards on small screens.
Yes, we know nothing: http://www.osnews.com/story/15389/Review_TenGO_2_0_and_TenGO_Thumb
TenGo is a lot like BlindType actually, in the respect that it tries to guess where you wanted to press (even if it’s not cut in 9 regions). The principle is the same.
Edited 2010-11-04 01:50 UTC
I think it would be a good input method for devices with analog nubs/joysticks (like the PSP or the OpenPandora) or maybe even with DPads (although I suspect software management for the timing might be a little harder).
The problem with these virtual input methods is that they’re gimmicky and unnatural. I do think they are tackling a legitimate dilemma with virtual qwerty keyboards on small screens and they are innovative in many respects. The issue is that don’t think people really want to learn a new way to write/type unless it is very natural or intuitive. Otherwise, although these methods may be faster, they really aren’t “easier” than just typing out the word because that’s how we learn to spell and write whether it’s on paper or on a computer. I’ve never relied on autocorrection or dictionaries and even though it may take a little longer, i prefer just spelling out the word. Plus, people use too much slang, abbreviations and what-not that the dictionaries aren’t aware. I think one answer to the problem is to stop treating physical keyboards as something that needs to be abolished. Compare the size the iPhone’s virtual keys and keyboard to a Blackberry’s. The iPhone’s are proportionally much bigger to alleviate the “fat finger” problem inherent on virtual keyboards. As a result, the virtual keyboard takes up over 50% of the screen when open. So, what’s the advantage of virtual there? Isn’t there a benefit to just tacking on a physical keyboard there for typing and leaving the screen 100% dedicated to non-typing things?
Odd. It may allow blind typing on a soft keyboard but the amount of effort that goes into typing just one letter seems excessive. Seems like gestures are the new transparency, or tabs: heavily abused new hotness.
I still refuse to buy a phone which doesn’t have a slide out keyboard.
Touch screen is great for many things, but for typing lenthy messages it is – and likely always will be – a nightmare.
[edit]
Ooops, this was meant to be a new thread rather than a reply
Edited 2010-11-04 09:36 UTC
The thumb is not the right finger to move in circular movements for a long period of time.
Lifting your finger off the screen produces a space? That would be my main objection. Being forced to finish the word or sentence you’re typing before you can scratch your nose (or another action) would be too limiting and irritating, both in practice and as an idea to reckon with.
I installed it the other night and I found that to be an issue — especially while learning how to use the input method. While learning I kept removing my finger so I could see where the letters were and I’d have to backspace before getting back to typing.
I never got attached to any of these “alt” entry methods. I tried Swype, after all the hype, and found that not being able to see the letters under my sliding fingers made it a non-starter; deleted within 5 minutes. I downloaded this as well, and while I could see it making blind entry easier, I’m far faster in landscape mode with my standard soft keyboard. I guess I’ll be waiting on a synaptic interface…
It would be great to hear another report in a couple weeks, to see how you like it after that time.