If the keyboard was invented today for mobile devices, would it have looked the same? That’s the question 8pen is trying to answer with their new virtual keyboard. Over 100k people have already watched the 8pen demo video, but in case you missed out take four minutes of your time and check it out below.

The developer describes the benefits of 8pen as: “Its advantage lies mainly in the fact that it is possible to input text faster than using conventional layouts on small devices, while at the same time mimicking human hand-writing. Moreover, the simplicity of the gestures involved greatly reduces the problem of mistyping that frequently occurs with the classical layout due to the lack of space. For the same reason, it is possible to write without viewing, as only the central region is needed as a reference for starting and ending a movement.”

The 8pen keyboard is now available in the Android Market for only $1.56 and it looks like it could be pretty interesting once you become familiar with its unique style. The 8pen keyboard was supposed to include support for Google’s voice recognition feature, but in order to support older devices from Android 1.6 forward, the feature has been removed.

Please share your feedback if you were brave enough to try it out. Do you think 8pen could replace Swype as the most popular alternative keyboard?