facepalm I was mistaken sorry, I was sure 8vim had a word suggestion feature at least but I must have mixed it up with something else gah, I don't tend to use word suggestion or autocorrect and haven't felt I needed it in 8vim but I somehow got in my head it had it.

That being said I unironically use 8vim as my phone keyboard and have for quite awhile now. I bounced off it a time or two trying to get committed to it but the hump of "this is weird" wasn't actually that bad.

What helps is as you say, 8vim is just more fun fluid (AND more precise) than normal touch keyboards.

I guess I am somewhat slower with it but also it is so much more precise and confident it is hard to compare directly. I can use keyboard heavy UIs like emacs perfectly fine with 8vim without getting frustrated about constantly mistyping inputs, I would never do that except as a meme with normal touch keyboards.