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T9, which stands for Text on 9 keys, is a patented predictive text technology for mobile phones, developed by Tegic Communications, recently acquired by Nuance Communications [1]. It is used on phones from LG, Samsung Electronics, Nokia, Siemens, Sony Ericsson, Sanyo, Sagem and others. Its main competitors are iTap, created by Motorola, and LetterWise, created by Eatoni.

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. It looks up in the dictionary all words corresponding to the sequence of keypresses.

As it 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.

1. Enter a word by tapping one key per letter.
2. The word displayed on the screen is not valid until the whole text is typed. Since T9 tries to find matching words while typing, the suggested word may change after each key press.
3. If T9 displays a word that is not the one you are looking for, press the Next key to scroll through the possible matches.
4. If the wanted word is not in T9’s dictionary, there is an option to add it after visiting all available words with the NEXT key. The word must be typed using the traditional multi-tap method.

• AutoText
• iTap
• LetterWise
• Predictive text
• T9onym
• WordWise
• International Phone Dictionary Day

• Nuance T9 site
• Words that T9 should have