There has been the stylus tech for a while to do good input, but typing out phonetically is basically much quicker (and the "flick"-based inputs of touchscreens even faster). Do you want to write out like 7 lines on a screen for a character? or just type its 2-4 letter phonetic?
The current input stuff is basically like T9 crossed with gmail's autocomplete: it's really good at predicting what you want for the most part, and lets you type at very fast speeds whne you're good at stuff. Exaggerating a bit with the GMail autocomplete but some very common fragments will pop up almost instantly when you start typing them in.
In a sense the input methods are a solved problem.
The current input stuff is basically like T9 crossed with gmail's autocomplete: it's really good at predicting what you want for the most part, and lets you type at very fast speeds whne you're good at stuff. Exaggerating a bit with the GMail autocomplete but some very common fragments will pop up almost instantly when you start typing them in.
In a sense the input methods are a solved problem.