It’s a confession, and I sure chose the perfect place to make it : I like T9. Now I will be silent for a moment while all of you start throwing tomatoes and eggs at me… Ok, now let me explain to you my reasons. The first time I discovered T9 on my 6610, I felt like I was hit by a genius ball. To me, at that moment, pressing the key once instead of repeatedly hitting it was nothing short of amazing. Ever since that day, I probably sent thousands of sms, most of them using T9. Well, I even used it on my old 3250 to write down a 12-page short story. There are two main reasons why I am satisfied with this solution that everyone else seems to despise.
Reason 1
With T9, I can type seriously fast and I can even do it blindfolded, while driving, in a classroom and looking at the teacher’s eyes, you get the idea. The facility of knowing the buttons is great because no matter what device I pick, I know where each of the 12 buttons are. I don’t need to be a rocket scientist in order to get going.
Problem is that on QWERTY devices, symbols are all over the place and so are the number keys. I’ve used an N810 and a Qtek 9100 before, both had QWERTYs, both I despised. The symbols were all over the keyboard, and number keys were on the top row which made it impossible to add a 3 or a 7 easily. The reason I am mentioning these two numbers is because they are used by us to write arabic words with latin characters, they replace letters that don’t exist in the english language. I realize other qwertys have different layouts, but the majority still keeps that top row pattern.
The second issue I have with qwerty is that there are too many keys to memorize, yes I know it’s the same layout as the computer keyboards, but it’s on a different scale which needs a new learning curve. Talking about scale, qwerty devices are often too large, making it an issue to have to move your thumb around in order to text. I’m not lazy, it’s more about speed and efficiency.
Still, my big issue with QWERTYs on mobiles is that they are too small to be used as a normal keyboard, and too big and complicated to be used one-handed and blindfolded. I am sure many E61 users will comment saying they type without looking, I am also sure that would be my case if I had such a device for a while, but the learning curve remains the problem, as well as the reproducibility of this over any other new qwerty they’d own, because each one seems to sport a newer layout.
Reason 2
What I love about T9 is that it is predictable and I can activate/deactivate it in less than a second. I speak 3 different languages and so do all of my friends, it’s also in our culture to use these 3 languages in the same sentence. It’s not genius, it’s how we’ve grown up. The good thing is that I can teach T9 new words which makes it a snap to later type a quick “hi, kifik, ca va?” in less than 5 seconds.
When QuickWrite was announced, and later Adaptxt which Zach reviewed a while ago, I tried them both thinking they might make texting even easier for me. The only conclusion I got away with was uninstalling the two applications 5 minutes after trying to type my first sms. Both of them seemed to rely on the dpad being pressed to finish words, meaning you would need to look at the screen to be sure you approved the right word. They also both relied on a “teaching” process where the word you use the most would pop up first, making the engine unpredictable (who knows what I use most “on” or “no”?). Another bad thing was that Adaptxt tried to override the * and # functionality. Pressing # for a while toggles Adaptxt on and off (normally it’s a double press with T9), pressing * when a word is still selected doesn’t allow you to cycle through the different possibilities but instead shows the symbol window. I was never a fan of an application that changes the default behavior of my handset that’s why I went back to T9 in no time.
Patrolling the web for the last months, I saw a lot of hype about a new Nseries qwerty handset, which reminded me that I am content with T9. So tell me, are you like me, or would you go qwerty all the way, or do you prefer 12-key handsets with a writing engine like QuickWrite or Adaptxt?
