THE VIDEO SHELF · touchscreen text input
The 8pen
A demo of the 8pen, a gesture-based keyboard replacement for touchscreens that lets users enter text by moving around a circle. It is meant for phones, remotes and game controllers and mimics handwriting.
Why HN readers recommended it
HN commenters who used it remember it as an unusually fast and accurate touchscreen text input method and a fascinating alternative to QWERTY.
This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.
Video & recommendation details
- Creator / channel
- 8pen
- Topic
- touchscreen text input
- Format
- demo
- Level
- general
- HN recommenders in dataset
- 2
- HN mentions in dataset
- 3
- Recommendation years in dataset
- 2022–2025
These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.
From the original HN conversations
Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.
> Sad thing is, that if someone would spend a ton of research and thinking on making something usable and comfortable, most people would completely poopoo it as a freaky unusable layout, just because it would look unfamiliar, lol. Absolutely. 8-Pen was this for Android. …
horsawlarway on Hacker News · 2022-06
In The PocketReform is a made-in-Berlin Linux handheldThe physical ones (on flip phones) were also 12-key (0-9, *, and #), so I suppose it was just swiping on the keys that was novel. It definitely does leave one to wonder whether that innovation was inspired by this prototype. Since we’re on the …
Tijdreiziger on Hacker News · 2023-01
In The iPhone Keyboard – Make It or Break It (2022)
Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.