Apple iPhone Gets Handwriting Recognition

Maybe you’re not digging the on-screen QWERTY keyboard of the Apple iPhone and would prefer the more intuitive interface of handwriting recognition. If this happens to be the case, then your prayers have been answered. A Chinese developer has come up with some software for the iPhone that, you guessed it, handles handwriting recognition in much the same way as classic Palm Pilots and similar devices.

The program, called HWPen, can be loaded up using Installer.app on your jailbroken iPhone and it not only works using standard Latin-based languages — you know, like English — but also with Chinese. Although you do not have the precision of a stylus, HWPen seems to work just fine using a finger. To install HWPen, go to Install.app, choose sources, click edit, then add http://iphonecake.com/src/new as a new source. You will have to restart your iPhone.

Because it is still in beta, HWPen is far from perfect. It doesn’t work in landscape mode and for whatever reason, it doesn’t appear in Mail.app. I’m sure the developer will iron out these bugs in due time. For a video of the action, check out the post on the Giz.