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Apple acquires third-party handwriting recognition software for iPhone OS 2.0 firmware

By: , IntoMobile
Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 at 5:35 PM

HWPen for handwriting recognition on iPhoneRemember that cool handwriting recognition software that I mentioned some time ago? Well, it seems that the HWPen application that was developed by Hanwang.com.cn has been acquired by Apple for use in the next major firmware release for the iPhone – the iPhone OS 2.0 firmware.

Hanwang claims that Apple has acquired their handwriting recognition software. It seems that Apple has chosen to acquire the recognition code rather than develop the software in-house – as previous iPhone OS 2.0 screenshots led us to believe.

Unfortunately, it seems that Apple may have crippled the handwriting recognition software to only work with Chinese character input – effectively keeping English text input restricted to the on-screen keyboard. We’ll have to wait for iPhone OS 2.0 to go live before we can confirm whether or not Apple has integrated HWPen into the iPhone, or if they decided to go with their own code to recognize handwritten text.

You can still grab HWPen for free for your jailbroken iPhone (this is how). If Apple really did take HWPen under its wing, expect free versions of the application to disappear right quick.

[Via: iPhone Atlas]

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About The Author

Will Park

Will hails from The City of Angels - Los Angeles, California. He spends his time playing with his numerous gadgets and looking forward to seeing what future holds for mobile technology. An avid promoter of a fully "digital" life, he promotes the widespread adoption of truly mobile, paper-less living. He dreams of the day when he can go completely digital. No more snail mail, paper receipts, bound books, notepads/spiral notebooks, credit cards, hard currency. He's a digital warrior - fighting for the converged life. He is an idealist and a realist - he has a perfect view of what the world should be but knows that the world is not perfect. Can we ever hope to see Will's dream become reality? We'll see...