Touchscreen phones tend to require constant visual attention, thus not allowing eyes-free interaction. For users with visual impairment, or when occupied with another task that requires a user's visual attention, these phones can be difficult to use. Recently, marks initiating from the bezel, the physical touch-insensitive frame surrounding a touchscreen display, have been proposed as a method for eyes-free interaction. Due to the physical form factor of the mobile device, it is possible to access different parts of the bezel eyes-free. In this paper, we first studied the performance of different bezel menu layouts. Based on the results, we designed a bezel-based text entry application to gain insights into how bezel menus perform in a real-world application. From a longitudinal study, we found that the participants achieved 9.2 words per minute in situations requiring minimal visual attention to the screen. After only one hour of practice, the participants transitioned from novice to expert users. This shows that bezel menus can be adopted for realistic applications.