AOL joins Symbian Platinum Program

langdona · #1 24-04-2003, 01:13 PM

In this press release America Online have become Symbian Platinum Partners. The good thing is it says they are developing their T9® predictive text input for Symbian which I assume will include P800's and other UIQ devices. So hopefully one of the main omissions for some potential P800 owners will soon be addressed. Also they are bringing their Instant Messager and UIQ to the platform as well as some "content-based" services and applications.

I'm just a bit confused as to how T9® works on the current Nokia series 60 devices? Perhaps its built directly into the firmware and avoids the Symbian OS altogether?

Bob · #2 24-04-2003, 01:45 PM

Nokia licenced T9 from AOL for their handsets many years ago, hence it is on the 7650 .

Bob

langdona · #3 24-04-2003, 04:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bob

Nokia licenced T9 from AOL for their handsets many years ago, hence it is on the 7650 .

Bob

Sorry Bob I did not make myself clear.

What I meant was the AOL press release says that they are porting T9 to Symbian, which implies that it does not run on Symbian at the moment, but the 7650 and 3650 already have T9!

So I was wondering if the T9 on the 7650/3650 is running under Symbian i.e. its compiled Symbian source code or is it in the firmware like non Symbian T9 phones. I suspect its firmware and built into the interface between the keyboard and Symbian so that any T9 predictions are completed before the data is passed to the Symbian OS.

This would also explain why T9 is not currently on the P800 as the P800 only has a touch screen interface as the keys just press on the relevant point on the screen. The touch screen is completely controlled by Symbian UIQ interface hence they could not apply the same solution. This is why they require a Symbian version of the T9 software to be activated when a key is pressed. I wonder if they will build it into the handwriting recognition as well.

Now that sounds complicated and its speculative and probably completely wrong anyone know for sure?

#4 24-04-2003, 08:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by langdona

So I was wondering if the T9 on the 7650/3650 is running under Symbian i.e. its compiled Symbian source code or is it in the firmware like non Symbian T9 phones. I suspect its firmware and built into the interface between the keyboard and Symbian so that any T9 predictions are completed before the data is passed to the Symbian OS.

T9 on series 60 is running completely under Symbian.