T9 (predictive text)
T9, which stands for Text on 9 keys, is a patented[1] predictive text technology for mobile phones, originally developed by Tegic Communications, now part of Nuance Communications[2]. T9 is used on phones from LG, Samsung Electronics, Nokia, Siemens, Sony Ericsson, Sanyo, Sagem and others. It was also used by Texas Instruments PDA Avigo during the late 90s. Its main competitors are iTap, created by Motorola, Zi’s eZiText, SureType, created by RIM and Eatoni’s LetterWise and WordWise. T9’s objective is to make it easier to type text messages. It allows words to be entered by a single keypress for each letter, as opposed to the multi-tap approach used in the older generation of mobile phones in which several letters are associated with each key, and selecting one letter often requires multiple keypresses. It combines the groups of letters on each phone key with a fast-access dictionary of words.
