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T9, which stands for Text on 9 keys, is a patented predictive text technology for mobile phones, originally developed by Tegic Communications, now part of Nuance Communications.
T9 is used on phones from LG, NEC, Nokia, Samsung Electronics, 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, SureType created by RIM, Eatoni's LetterWise and WordWise, and Intelab's Tauto.
It combines the groups of letters on each phone key with a fast-access dictionary of words. It looks up in the dictionary all words corresponding to the sequence of keypresses and orders them by frequency of use. As T9 gains familiarity with the words and phrases the user commonly uses, it speeds up the process by offering the most frequently used words first and then lets the user access other choices with one or more presses of a predefined Next key.
The dictionary can be expanded by adding missing words, enabling them to be recognized in the future. After introducing a new word, the next time the user tries to produce that word T9 will add it to the predictive dictionary.
The user database (UDB) can be expanded via multi-tap. The implementation of the user database depends on the version of T9 and how T9 is actually integrated on the device. Some phone manufacturers implement a permanent user database, while others implement one for the duration of the session.
The UDB is an optional feature which allows words that were explicitly entered by the user to be stored for future reference. The number of words stored depends on the implementation as well as the language.
In later versions of T9, the order of the words presented adapts to the usage pattern. For instance, in English, 4663 matches "good", "home", "gone", "hood", etc. Such combinations are known as textonyms; e.g., "home" is referred to as an textonym of "good". When the user uses "home" more often than "good", eventually the two words will switch position. Information about common word combinations can also be learned from the user and stored for future predictions.
For words entered by the user, word completion can be enabled. When the user enters matching key-presses, in addition to words and stems, the system will also provide completions.
In later versions of T9, the user can select a primary and secondary language and matches from both languages are presented. This enables users to write messages in their native as well as a foreign language.
Some implementations also learn commonly used word pairs and provide word prediction (e.g. if you often write "eat food", after entering "eat" the phone will suggest "food" and it can be confirmed by simply pressing next).
Another powerful feature is its ability to automatically recognise and correct typing/texting errors, by looking at neighbouring keys on the keypad to ascertain an incorrect keypress. For example, the word "testing" would be entered with the key combination "8378464". Entering the same number but with two incorrect keypresses of neighbouring keys, e.g., "8278494" still results in T9 suggesting the words "tasting" (8278464), "testing" (8378464), and "tapping" (8277464).
Category:Input/output Category:Natural language processing Category:User interface techniques Category:Mobile technology Category:Nuance software
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