"Google today released Handwrite, a new feature for mobile phones and tablets that allows users to hand-write search queries directly on the browser window without opening a keyboard – and it supports Chinese, too!"

Thearticle is here: http://chinesehacks.com/resources/mobile/google-releases-handwrite-with-chinese-support/

This sounded like a good idea until I remembered I have a handwriting input for Chinese on my phone and iPad.

Some mobile devices only accept handwritten Chinese in a special input area. With "Handwrite", one can write Chinese queries directly on the browser window.

Did you say iPhones have Chinese handwriting input by default?

Wow, I just found it. Mind is blown. If only I knew this entire time.

In the language settings you can add Pinyin, Chinese handwriting (simp/trad), Stroke (simp/trad), Cangjie, and Zhuyin keyboards.

Other keyboards I use are Czech (which can write all pinyin accents except above ü), and Greek which is handy for writing mathematics, and Emoji which is more cute than useful.

Incidentally, did anyone else notice the cute feature that the pinyin keyboard matches against many Emoji pictures? So if you type, for example, "pinguo" you see a little picture of an apple 🍎 as one of the options along with the hanzi.

@tianHaneul Many OSes have Chinese Input in some form although it can be a pain to set up. Think Windows. Fortunately for us, very good help comes from Pinyin Joe at: http://www.pinyinjoe.com/

Don't let the name put you off. He covers all forms of Chinese input.

@Dennis I went looking for it and found it immediately after seeing your original post. I was just surprised I had never bothered to consider the iPhone might have that built in just like in Windows! Great thing to know :D

@alanmd that's neat! 🍎☕🔊🎷🎵😄 (apologies for those not on Apple computer who can't see these emoji choices for the following pinyin: pingguo kafei shengyin yinyue yinyue haha)