Let’s face it: Typing on your touchscreen mobile phone with your big fat fingers is still too difficult and error-prone. Five alternate Android keyboards aim to make text entry on a tiny touchscreen faster and easier using a variety of methods, from radical redesigns to smarter predictive text.

8pen (Gesture-based)

The newest and most ambitious of the bunch, 8pen redesigns the mobile touch keyboard completely by splitting the keyboard area into quadrants. To type, you swipe circles around the quadrants that specify letters based on what quadrant your circle started and ended in. The 8pen keyboard takes dedication and time to learn, but once you do, text entry is very fast with big targets fit for big fingers. You can program certain gestures to output frequently used phrases, too. For example, a circle could output your email address or full name. The 8pen keyboard is free in the Android Market.

Pros: 8pen’s large quadrants and function keys are almost impossible to miss. Custom gestures for frequently-used phrases is a powerful time saver.

Cons: 8pen’s learning curve is extremely steep. Plan to work through the 8pen tutorial and spend at least 20 minutes just learning the placement of the letters in the quadrants.

Skip to 1:18 to go right to seeing what it’s like to type with 8pen: