A rapid growth in advanced mobile technologies has opened various research interests.rnHandheld devices like Smartphones are getting a wide range of acceptance due to the fullfledgedrnfunctionalities they provide. They are being designed to have the ability to accessrninformation of any type ubiquitously.rnText entry mechanisms are main concerns in handheld devices as they are the core interactionrnways of communication. To best use of all features incorporated in these devices, an efficientrntext entry mechanism is vital. Considering the aim to achieve the goals of being small in sizernto hold and easy to use, made to look for alternative text entry techniques rather thanrnsticking to the hardware keyboard which resulted in difficulties to attain the goals set.rnUsing the touch screen capabilities of handhelds, online handwriting recognition and softrnkeyboard entries are becoming better options for text entry into these devices considering therninconvenience of hardware keyboards to be used.rnIn this work, an Ethiopic Online Handwriting Recognition (EOHWR) input method isrndeveloped for an Android-based Smartphones where users of the script shall benefit from itrnby using the developed input method in different applications that exist on the device. In itsrnintegration, the work considered previous efforts exerted on the EOHWR.rnThe work followed a constrained, writer independent approach for its recognition. Itrndeveloped representation symbols for thirty four basic characters, a numeral and punctuationrnof the Ethiopic script resembling the natural script and stored their references persistently.rnUsers need to learn the symbols prior to usage. It also puts some restrictions on the orders inrnwhich strokes that build a character should be inserted. In its recognition, it followed arntemplate matching technique computing the directional distances between segments of arnstroke for each character.rnThe work incorporates the usage of the non basic characters, numerals and punctuationsrnwhich are found in the Ethiopic script by making them to be candidate soft key options ofrntheir corresponding basic symbol. Thus, whenever recognition takes place for a basic symbol,rnits non basic character family will be available to be selected. Its usability and accuracy isrnaffirmed getting an average accuracy of about 80 percent.rnKeywords: Ethiopic Input Method for Android, Constrained Ethiopic Online HandwritingrnRecognition System, Writer Independent Ethiopic Online Handwriting Recognition System