Are there any hand held translators that do this?

Wow - I'm surprised this passed through as a "rumor" - this is third-party software, readily available on installer. FWIW... it sucks, not even worth the download.

[www.iphoneskinning.com]

There are much better third-party options already available. Handwriting recognition is way overrated, to say the least.

if iphone goes to japan, then it would be the iphone 3G. I like this feature ( crossing fingers to be on the next software update) cause i'm study japanese right know.

Nifty. It's the Newton, only prettier.

I am not certain I even remember how to write anymore. I probably need to go back to kindergarten if this is the direction technology is going (again).

So you're saying instead of just tapping a letter, I can draw it with my finger and then tap it anyway? What an improvement!

This is not third party software... it is actually in the iphone firmware 2.0. And it looks really useful, if you are chinese. Not so much for those who use roman letters.

Good luck writing some 12+ stroke kanji on that thing.

@aktif8: Agreed. This has been around for around on Installer.app, and it does, indeed, suck. Plus, I think hand-writing recognition will actually slow your texting speed...

SWEEEEEET!!! That's awesome!

I can't wait to get my hands on this. Granted yes, writing out a 12 stroke 漢字 would bite but sometimes I can't remember the life of me the 拼音 or ロマン字 but I do remember the 漢字. And I write/speak 中文 and 日本語 so this would totally rock for me!

so in japan and china... AT&T is called ... "Kenneth"?

dan rather can't be liking that.

Observations from the screen shots gallery:
- 1st pic shows that it is possible to turn on off multiple language input (Norway, Holland, Poland, Portuguese x2, Russian, Sweden, Chinese simplified, Chinese Traditional..)

- Chinese input can be Handwriting or Pinyin (romanizing)

- A menu to browse (or edit) chinese phrase shortcut(eg. type "I" system will suggest "I am" "i was" etc to save you from typing )

-FarEast tone is Taiwan

This could actually teach people who don't know how to write but speak to phonetically write Chinese. But they need to at least recognize the word somewhat to be able to do it.

eat up martha!

.....uh... how u do this without a pen?

@theharlotfelon:

Anyone of you have tried to learn Chinese or Japanese? Well, try it, an then tell us how is it possible to write down a kanji with more than 15 lines, with the thumb, in a small part of the screen. Almost impossible.

Of course, is a good feature for Japanese and Chinese people, but I think they will need to use a pen or similar.

@iscangel - A 3G iPhone won't work in Japan, they'll need to produce a (W-)CDMA iPhone if they want to sell in Japan.