This falls under one of those projects I would actually get behind (and code if I could, but I can't, so oh well) - though I believe it would be best to make it an optional input method among many - portrait qwerty, portrait T9-like, and portrait this wheel thing being options you can switch between in settings (or ideally on the fly).

I honestly don't agree with the claims above about this being harder to learn. It's harder for US to learn, because we already grew up with T9 and QWERTY. But this isn't about just us. This is about usable interfaces for years to come. And this little wheel idea is actually, I feel, very much visionary, in so far as you can use that word on input methods.

The only thing is, I think that the central wheel has to be bigger for it to truly be easy and intuitive to guide your finger inside the wheel. And eventually you WILL memorize the locations of the symbols, just like you eventually learn to remember where the keys are on the keyboard. Indeed, I think that's easier, because your mind can remember key/symbol positions in clusters, which are then broken down into numbers of quarters of rotation around the center.