Something I can’t remember hearing much complaint about, surprisingly, is the absence of handwriting recognition on the iPhone.  There have been various studies comparing the on-screen QWERTY keyboard with T9 and hardware thumb-board options, but seemingly little demand for the ability to write directly onto the cellphone’s screen.  Well, anybody who has missed such an option can now install iPhone Graffiti; as the name suggests, it’s a version of the Graffiti handwriting recognition, as seen on Palm OS devices.

Supporting Latin and Chinese characters, as well as full punctuation and symbols, letters are drawn on the input grid in the lower half of the screen and converted as you write.  Since the iPhone doesn’t use a stylus, you might find you need to train your finger to make the shapes clearly.  Alternatively there are a couple of compatible styli available, such as from Pogo.

iPhone Graffiti is still in early beta form, so the advice is to back up your handset before installing it.  Some users are experiencing an issue with uninstalling the app, too, so if you’re overly cautious then maybe wait for a version further down the line.  Still interested?  Add iphonecake.com/src/all as a source to Installer and go from there.

[via ModMyiFone]