Aside from the small, on-screen keyboard that many seem to master by now, Google is yet adding another feature to its Android devices. It’s called “Handwriting Input”, which let users input text and emoji by simply using handwriting as an alternative to the keyboard and voice input.
Google Handwriting Input is a free app available for Android phone and tablets and it’s available in 82 languages. The app support printed and cursive writing with or without stylus. You can even draw emoji by pressing and holding the Enter button to switch modes.
Here is a video from YouTube demonstrating the app:
In addition, Google says that to create the new feature they had to use a large-scale of language modeling and neural-networks, and approximate nearest neighbor search for character classification, and robust multi-language OCR to provide the new functionality to users without an internet connection.
The company also says that Google Handwriting Input works very well for languages that are challenging to type on a virtual keyboard such as Chinese.
Although, the new Android functionality does not require an internet connection to work, Google also added an option to enable more accurate recognition using Google’s servers.
- Download Google Handwriting Input from Google Play Store
Source Google
