Gadgetory

can we break from the traditional QWERTY keyboard I'm Taylor Martin this is PocketNow and this is the eighth pin keyboard that I used for about a week and a half a few weeks back I made a video about the best Android keyboards the third-party solutions that make typing on your Android device easier faster more error-free towards the end of that video I mentioned two non traditional software keyboards a pen and menuhim the creators of both 8-pin and min UUM asked approximately the same question before jumping into their endeavors how can we make typing on smaller devices better the answer to that question was quite different from each firm but both are quite radically different from anything widely used today menuhim effectively squeezes a standard QWERTY layout down into a single staggered row of letters and eliminates the need for utter accuracy a pen with letters arranged in quadrants around a center circle is an entirely different and unique concept in itself one that stems from the natural flow and ease of handwriting I first saw 8-pin in November 2010 and the media swooned over the possibility of a solution to the inaccurate and frustrating ways of mobile typing I immediately bought the keyboard and installed it I used 8 pin for a few days then everyone seemed to have uninstalled a pin and moved on a little bitter inside knowing in its current form 8 pin was not the answer but before making the keyboard video I noticed the company had released an update to the Play Store the keyboard UI look nicer more refined and it sported a new layout one with more finite science behind it after shooting and publishing the video I thought to myself could these non-traditional keyboards ever be any more efficient than your standard QWERTY could you actually use one of them for an amount of time and become as fast and as efficient with them as you are with your QWERTY something we've all been using our entire lives since menuhim isn't publicly available yet I enabled 8 pin and dedicated an entire week to using the keyboard to be frank the first few hours are the worst i sat on my couch practically typing one letter at a time studying the keyboard and memorizing the layout of the letters by force swipe out from the center to the right drag up to the left and back into the center for letter a swipe down from the center drag left and cross to quadrant lines and go back to the Center for letter L I know it sounds complicated and it isn't exactly straightforward typing simple letters is actually pretty difficult at first learning to form words is the next step and typing entire sentences and paragraphs comes last through muscle memory you begin to learn the loops and they slowly become more natural I started typing with a pen on Thursday evening by Sunday I was typing relatively quickly with a pen in fact by Monday I had nearly reached the point of being able to type without paying too much attention to the keyboard sure just like with swipe or other keyboards with gesture input has to have to constantly glance at what I'm typing but after just a few days of dedicating myself to a pen I was able to type with minimal effort learning how to take advantage of word suggestions is the key and still something I'm struggling with as you type 3 word suggestions are displayed just above the keyboard to select the suggestion from the left slide your finger out from the center to the left and back to the center for the middle word upwards from the center and back and slide to the right from the center and back for suggestions on the right making use of the suggestion certainly move things along more quickly but while I've been able to forcefully memorize the keyboard typing with a pen still suffers from three significant flaws the distance your finger has to travel to type a single letter no capitalization key and no word prediction the lack of a capitalization key may sound like some silly oversight but this was done purposefully by the developers to capitalize a letter you must drag out from the center and make a full circle in the direction of the letter you want then choose the letter as you normally would which sounds really confusing this gets me to my other point just to capitalize you have to drag your finger around the keyboard at least once four letters towards the outside you must drag your finger around twice or one and a half turns it's a bit much just to capitalize a letter but even to type a Z W or Q I often found myself asking if this was truly more intuitive or efficient than just sliding my finger over the actual letter a la swipe keyboards like SwiftKey the stock Android keyboard and swype all incorporate technology that learns the way you type over time meaning those keyboards can not only finish your words but sometimes finish your phrases and sentences for you this would make 8-pin a whole heck of a lot better and offset the extra distance traveled to type those less commonly used outside letters all in all my week with a pen was a lot more enjoyable than I imagined it would be I had a lot of people asking if I was sadistic for wanting to use the headache-inducing keyboard for more than just a few minutes but it turned out to be quite a fun learning experience and truthfully I plan to keep using 8-pin albeit not full time Michael fester the CEO and founder of 8-pin tells us there is a major announcement slated for early summer hopefully this will bring some much-needed language prediction software and a capitalization key if so a pin could certainly become my daily driver which is something I never imagined I would say just two weeks ago if you liked this video and found it helpful and would like to see more like it be sure to give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel and follow us on your favorite social networks you can also follow me at Casper Tech on Twitter I'm Taylor Martin and I will see you next time