The news is coming out of 3GSM thick and fast. To keep up we’re planning to report is a slightly different way. When we see a press release that we thinks of interest to you, Dear Reader, we’ll put it up in full, with a brief comment at the top. Normal service will be resumed post 3GSM.
—
What a coincidence, we’ve been wondering what’s happened to T9, the method that dominates the fast input of text into a ‘normal’ mobile numeric keypad. We thought that the founders must be sitting on a desert island somewhere, having bought it, living the life of Riley.
Well Tegic, who sell T9, is owned by AOL these days and they’re announcing the integration of their follow-on product, XT9, onto Samsung mobile phones.
XT9 been around since October 2005, but it’s the first time we’ve heard of it. and it appears that they’re making a splash at 3GSM. XT9 has expanded to encompass hard and soft QWERTY keyboard with handwriting recognition capabilities using a stylus as well.
—
Samsung to Integrate XT9 Mobile Interface to Drive
New XT9 Debuts at 3GSM World Congress
3GSM World Congress (Barcelona, Spain) – February 13, 2006 – Tegic, a division of AOL, today announced that Samsung Electronics plans to be the first handset maker to integrate the XT9 Mobile Interface (formerly T9 Mobile Suite), a first of its kind, multi-modal user interface, into new handsets.
The XT9™ Mobile Interface, which launched in October 2005, seamlessly integrates popular T9® software for the phone keypad, as well as hard and soft QWERTY keyboard, with handwriting recognition capabilities using a stylus.
This pioneering user interface is designed to enable users to easily toggle between messaging modes, as well as numbers, letters, symbols and languages, and also allows for auto-accenting of words, a benefit for users of many European languages, including French, Spanish and Italian.
“Samsung is a long-standing partner for Tegic so we are pleased to work closely to integrate XT9 into a series of new devices,” said Bill Schwebel, president, Tegic Communications. “We share a common goal, which is to open up new revenue streams for handset makers and operators as voice revenues decline. Our new multi-modal user interface will help realize this potential.”
Today, Tegic also announced new XT9 Mobile Interface features. By making it simpler to type words and phrases, XT9 makes it easier to enjoy popular content and wireless services, driving widespread consumer adoption of mobile web browsing, search and messaging. This new product upgrade adds the following new features:
- Next Letter Prediction: When entering letters by scrolling through an alphabet (up-and-down or side-to-side), XT9 predicts the user’s next letter based on previous letters entered. For example, if a user inputs “l-o-v,” then XT9 will present the next letter as “e” for the word “love” rather than have the user scroll through the alphabet from “v” to “e.”
- * Regional Error Correction: For users of hard QWERTY keyboards (e.g., chiclet), XT9 helps ensure a better messaging experience by compensating for users tapping incorrect keys on the keyboard. For example, if a users inadvertently types in “m-o-o-b,” XT9 will present “moon” since the “b” is just one key away from the “n,” and the word “moon” is a more likely choice.
For handset makers, XT9 can help speed time-to-market for new mobile devices. Further, this new user interface makes it easier for consumers to access mobile content and services, enabling users to take advantage of all their phone has to offer. Samsung plans to integrate XT9’s full and reduced QWERTY capabilities into new devices to ship later this year.
The XT9 Mobile Interface is currently available in English, French, Spanish, German and Italian. Additional Latin- and script-based languages are also available upon request. Later this year, Tegic plans to release XT9 2.0, which will include advanced speech recognition capabilities, as well as Chinese handwriting recognition.