Comments on: First Impressions of iPhone Handwriting Recognition – It Sucks

By: patrickj

patrickj — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 01:11:29 +0000

In reply to fonfon. Sorry, you lost me a bit on the copy&paste piece. You're in favor of it, or not? I feel handwriting recognition is only really useful if it is *fully* supported by the OS. It's just not very interesting if it is isolated to one app, no matter how good that app may be.

By: fonfon

fonfon — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 07:40:04 +0000

In reply to patrickj. 100% agree with that, with one nuance thought... copy&paste. Just a nuance of course, that's clumsy to move things around. But I like the idea of small specialized things being able to communicate. Maybe even the OS should be one of those small things... Also, that would be cool if apple was opening the keyboard ui as a plugin... Maybe that's done already?? Ok, proper link (not the only handwriting app available by the way): http://www.ubitouch-studio.com/ijot

By: patrickj

patrickj — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 18:40:00 +0000

In reply to fonfon. Your link needs to lose the comma at the end of it in order to work. I think no matter how good a single app is, without support within the OS, things are not that interesting.

By: fonfon

fonfon — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 18:09:35 +0000

It always strike me that before doing handwriting recognition, one should have a decent… handwriting app!
I was recently pleased by stuff like http://www.ubitouch-studio.com/ijot, kind of original.
But the bottom line: start with beginning!!

By: patrickj

patrickj — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 17:03:46 +0000

In reply to Mike. It'd sure be nice if there was something effective and able to be baked into the OS.

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 03:28:36 +0000

WritePad blows… the iPhone needs Graffiti!

By: patrickj

patrickj — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 22:43:54 +0000

Anil – no, built-in apps have no support for handwriting recognition …

By: Anil

Anil — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 21:14:38 +0000

it is possible to search the address book using the handwriting option?

By: patrickj

patrickj — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 16:25:22 +0000

Keith – good questions. Here's some answers:
1. You don't have to be jailbroken, but handwriting recognition is not yet widely supported amongst apps – none of the built-in apps support it as far as I know, and only a very small number of 3rd party apps do.
2. Yes – I did try that, with not much difference in results. Still very awkward and clumsy (to put it mildly) compared to how it was on WinMo.
3. No. Not at all. Writepad Notes is one of the very, very few apps I've ever come across with support for handwriting recognition.

Hopefully this will improve in future – but for now, handwriting recognition is a no-go for me on the iPhone. Maybe the new model will offer a little better support, though I've not seen anything to that effect mentioned …

By: Keith

Keith — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 16:12:00 +0000

PatrickJ – Thanks for this article. I have been Windows Mobile for quite some time and I have finally decided to venture into the iPhone world simply because of it's fantastic array of apps that everyone seems to be writing for it. I love my Letter Recognition tool on my WinMo phone and am researching before my iPhone 3G S reaches me Friday for something comparable.

1) Is this handwriting recognition tool a part of the iPhone now or does it have to be jailbroken?
2) Did you try just using your hand instead of the stylus pen?
3) Is the tool available in any app that you use like texting, notes, browsing?

Thanks!