How To: The Art Form Of T9

Texting. It’s the new paging, in a way. People who are too lazy to actually pick up the phone, expend energy and say words out loud. Sad I know that it has come to this, but with the world going to texting, it’s time everyone gets a quick training course on the art of T9.

Now I know some of you reading this, still hunt and peck, some of you still will hit the ABC button 3 times to get to a C, and that’s an insult to yourself and other around you. You waste time by multiple button presses, and it’s what deters the older set from even trying to text. They see it as an art form that never picked up, and expends to much time. With this refresher, and new training course, you should be able to pick up your phone and start learning in no time.

First I’ll walk you through the OLD way. Which is usually typified by “ABC” on a phone, which stands for, “you have to press every letter out, to get a message out.” Could be the single lamest thing I know, but it is part of the way it works.
    Step 1. Get to the text messaging part of your phone. I know this is bush league to have to explain but find the “TXT Message” part of your phone.

    Step 2. Plan out what your going to say, for these purposes, We’ll say, “Hello World.”

    Step 3. You’ll have to press 4-4,3-3,5-5-5,5-5-5,6-6-6 to spell “Hello” as each time you press 4 you start at G then move to H. SPACE which is usually labeled on your keypad, then World would be “9,6-6-6,7-7-7,5-5-5,3” That’s 25 key presses to get out two words, right? Then you press send, maybe a phone number, lets say 30 presses all in.

Who in their right mind wants 30 presses to get out 10 letters? It’s 3 times the work, and it honestly takes up so much time, and is so inefficient, that it’s not worth the hassle. That’s where “T9” or “Word” comes in, depending on your phone company. I’m about to teach you basic how-to, and it’ll guide you to basic use on a system. Now this is BYOP (bring your own phone), so the instructions will be a little different per phone. Just know that this will get you through it, and after that you’ll pick it up on your phone.

    Step 1. Get to the TXT screen again, make sure you’re in the message. Now, most phones don’t come with T9 already activated.

Step 2. Go into the options. Make sure when you do, find “Word” or “T9” this will be SMART TYPE. It’s a predicative text, it’ll take the letters your typing in, and guess what the most probable word that your giving it is.

    Step 3. Once you verify you want to type that, you will be sent back to your message screen and the fun will begin. This requires you thinking about what you want to say. So we’ll go with the same words “Hello World”.

    Step 4. Begin by spelling it in your head “hello”, 4-3-5-5-6. It’s the keys on which each one of those letters are, if you have a good dictionary, it’ll pick up the word “hello”. Space, then 9-6-7-5-3, and that will pick up the word “World”. So, in a total of 11 keys, you’ve typed it. You’ve literally cut it in half, which makes texting much much longer messages quicker and more efficient. The basic premise being that you only press the key of the letter you want once. As long as it’s in the dictionary, it’ll be there. Shorter words like “Be”, “we”, “and”, are short enough you may have to scroll through the words, but that is the “next” function on your phone, and it’ll be on your keypad.

Texting, the next instant messaging. As we’re on the go, and lord knows we’re all on the go. It’s faster to send a note, a sentence to someone, to make sure you got your point across fast enough. The problem has always been the inconvenience of texting. You couldn’t do it fast enough, it took too much thought, it took too much time, too much effort. I think that, with this, I can help you at least get off the ground and learn how to T9 your own way.

The oddly named UBiQUiO 503G Pocket PC Phone looks set to ship this June 20, so those who can afford to wait on picking a smartphone till then ought to give this a little more thought. After all, the UBiQUiO 503G is powered by a pretty muscular 520MHz processor, featuring 256MB ROM, tri-band UMTS/HSDPA support, integrated WiFi and stereo Bluetooth connectivity, a 2 megapixel CMOS camera with micro focus and a standard VGA camera for video calls over a 3G network. A microSD memory card slot is there for memory expansion options. There is no word on pricing for this quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE handset though.

MoGo has unveiled a new 5mm thin Bluetooth 2.0 headset at CTIA, bringing users true mobile convenience. Weighing a mere 1/3 oz, the Mogo Bluetooth headset comes with a fold-out ear piece that rests comfortably in the ear and stored flat when not in use. You can always slip it into any available PCMCIA or ExpressCard 34 slot for charging purposes, making you travel even lighter since there is no need to lug around additional cables. In addition, by simply placing it in either slot makes for a great storage location. Pricing and availability details are still unknown.

T-Mobile has leaked their stuff once again. This time it’s all about the Sidekick ID. First and foremost, it will be available in a variety of colors (obviously from the picture). It will also have a $50 mail-in-rebate (making the final price $100) and an April 18ish release date.

The kind of cell phone you own may say a lot about your personality. At least that’s what the folks at Nielsen think. They just competed a study that picks out your personality type based on what mobile you own.

Motorola users, for example, were deemed stylish, fun seekers whereas Nokia folks were healthy and middle-aged. What did the rest of the survey say, hit the jump for the full results. Let’s just say I’m glad I don’t own an LG phone.

Nokia Family-minded Middle aged managers Health conscious

Motorola
Fashion conscious
Under 24
Fun seekers

Sony Ericsson
Ambitious young men
Professionals
Success driven

Samsung
Young women
Career focused
Success drivers

LG
Stay at home parents
Moms

When you think about it, Vertus and Ferraris have a lot in common: just as Ferraris give a select few the opportunity to spend an insane amount of cash on an object that provides little more value than a, say, $1,000 used car, Vertu offers a product with little additional value (and in some cases, less value) than phones offered free from carriers. Of course, you can’t put a price on status, so getting these two status symbols to hook up and co-brand a device seems like a match made in heaven (more appropriate than a Ferrari-branded Moto, for example). The “Ferrari Challenge” rendition of the Ascent — in red and black leather — is limited to 1,947 examples (can that many people in the world really afford this thing?), each featuring a couple well-placed Ferrari logos and some weird thing on the back that’s apparently supposed to look like a brake pedal. Look for it to grace your local Vertu retailer in July — but please don’t use it while driving, lest you destroy your real Ferrari, k?

Hey, hey, just three weeks after we got word, out pops the Nokia XpressMusic 5700. Just like the XpressMusic 3250, the 5700 gets its multi-media on via a quick flick of the base. This UMTS S60 twister brings a 2 megapixel shooter with up to 2GB of MicroSD storage. The focus here, though, is music so it packs WM DRM support with a “dedicated audio chip” to keep the music flowing, integrated stereo speakers, Bluetooth A2DP, and 3.5-mm adapter to fit your favorite headphones. Hitting Europe in Q2 for a pre-VAT price of €350.

Those maniacal bastards at Helio finally launched that smartphone we told you about a few weeks back. The Ocean’s most remarkable feature is its double-slider: it’s like a triple decker of LCD, QWERTY, and Dialpad. That also makes it kind of not-skinny at 0.86 inches, around the thickness of last year’s Hiptop 3.

But I’m willing to overlook that because of the extremely useful OS upgrades and software they’ve included:

There’s an integrated IM/TXT/SMS/email interface that supports all the majors, including pop/IMAP/Exchange ActiveSync. Then they’ve taken their shitty browser and turned it into a full HTML browser with a mini map to it that gives a zoomed-out perspective of the entire webpage. No word on Flash compatibility, but I’m not holding my breath. Then there’s the search bar that with one text field will bring back Yahoo, Google, Wikipedia, and local search results. Then there’s Helio’s Music service, GPS features, Playsforsure, and UP, which is a photo upload service that works with the 2.0MP cam. And the UI works in landscape and portrait. I hope the phone runs java apps, but it’s likely it won’t. $295, and it’s all yours.

Ocean Specifications
Form Factor - Dual Slider - alphanumeric keypad + full QWERTY keyboard
Color - Black
Dimensions - 4.33″ x 2.20″ x .86″
Weight - 5.61 oz
Display - 2.4 inch QVGA display, 240 x 320, 260K colors
3G Speed - EV-DO network support for fast multimedia downloads
Talk Time - Up to 5.1 hours
Memory - 200MB internal memory expandable via microSD™ with USB Mass Storage Mode
Camera - 2.0 Megapixel, digital zoom, built-in flash
Video Camera - MPEG-4 video recording
Audio - Stereo Bluetooth® wireless technology
Personal Entertainment Center - Supports: MP3, AAC, WMA, MPEG-4, H.264, VOD, MOD
Additional Features -
POP/IMAP Email Support
Supports Helio Music
GPS-enabled services and applications
Photo caller ID,

Ocean Comes With
Battery + Charger
Stereo Headset
USB Cable
2.5 to 3.5mm Headset Adapter

Accessorize in Our Store
Car Charger
Carrying Case

Bluetooth® Stereo headset

Sony Ericsson’s mobiles usually don’t make it to this side of the Atlantic, but that trend changed today with the Z750, SE’s first HSDPA phone for the States. Essentially what that means is the phone will stream video and let you surf the Web at superfast speeds (for a mobile at least).

Like the Z310 it’ll have a mirrored finish that flashes with incoming calls or text messages. You also get a 2-megapixel cam, VGA video camera, Bluetooth, and a Memory Stick slot.

We just got done talking to Sprint about their latest (and some would say best) music phone, the Samsung Upstage. Here are some previously unreleased details that may have not been found here (or anywhere else).

• It’s cheap: Only $149 with contract. That’s way low for a music phone with this kind of featureset.

• Unfortunately, the Upstage won’t play any other form of DRM (the songs from Sprint aren’t DRMEd, actually, which is nice). So your iTunes, Zune, Napster, and other form of DRMed music won’t be able to be played on this.

• It comes with 64MB built-in memory, but will accept 1 and 2GB flash cards.

Jump for some more bullets, and a shocker!

• The Upstage will not be able to use music you’ve downloaded from their 1.4 million track repository for MP3 ringtones. In fact, from what Sprint said, you can’t use MP3 ringtones at all. Ouch. We blame the RIAA for this inability to use music as a ringtone in a music phone.

• You can download tracks both over the air (OTA) or on your PC, and the service will remember which tracks you’ve downloaded.

• The OTA versions are more compressed than the ones from the PC—which has standard MP3 compression—so if you wanted to, you could download a higher quality version of the song later for free (see above bullet).

• You can use the phone in USB Disk mode along with their own proprietary music manager service.

• Head to sprint.com/upstage to sign up for their 4/1 launch.

And finally, when we asked Sprint how this compares to the upcoming Phone (since they are both music-centric phones), Sprint gave us four ways in which they’re different. Here they are, in bullet point form.

• It’s much cheaper. $149 vs. $499

• It’s smaller.

• It has OTA music downloads.

• The touchscreen feature on the iPhone will be hard to use for the majority of users.