Ask HN: Password entry on mobile devices; how can it be improved?

For various reasons I've had to use three different personal phones recently; one Windows Mobile 6, one Android 2.2, and an older-style Sony Ericsson candybar.

They all have the same problem - entering passwords is awkward. Further, I purchased 1Password for Mac yesterday and decided to go through some older passwords and update them and I realised how much MORE awkward it is when you've got a good (complex) password!

Android's idea to replace PIN for unlocking the phone was to use a pattern which the user draws with their finger on-screen. I don't use this personally on my droid, but I've played with it and it seems to work quite well.

However it is for a specific purpose, and cannot be used for my HN password which I use on both my computer and my phone. This seems like a very difficult problem to solve, but one which I feel is very interesting and could be valuable. I'm not going to be looking at it myself, I was just compelled to ask this question by my experiences this weekend.

Is there anybody out there solving this problem?