they (or at least the later palm pilot) had a surprisingly robust system for recognizing handwriting! individual characters had to be single strokes, and you needed to write each one a buncha times to calibrate initially so it has something to compare against, but i remember it being notably faster to type with than other contemporaneous tiny keyboards.
i reckon qud is the smaller burden between the two. in terms of both how much you’ll need to learn, and how much of your life it will eat once you do.