Resurrecting flip phone typing as a Linux driver • Hacker News Board

Re: Resurrecting flip phone typing as a Linux driver

#71

Post by jaffa2 » Wed, Jun 25, 2025, 12:25 AM UTC

kfarr wrote: post #17

jaffa2 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? The great thing about T9 (certainly on the Nokia 3210 and 8210) back in the day was you could type messages fast with few k/s without looking. As long as you had enough experience to know the word combos. Ive never found a t9 system as good as the Nokia implementation. In some respects its better than qwerty for short messages. And don’t get me started on apples fundamentally broken auto correct system. People d…

I remember it would always default to book instead of cool

you make the point very well! You can still remember, what, 20 years later ?

On the nokia you'd press the button and it would cycle through the options. Once you knew all the words you could type really very fast indeed, and blind.

Someone asked about custom words below. You could definitely add custom words. I think you had to switch out of T9, key the word the old way and then switch back then 'add' to dictionary, but once in it would stay in the dictionary. I'm sure the amount of memory for custom words was quoted in marketing material at somepoint.

Re: Resurrecting flip phone typing as a Linux driver

#72

Post by Cene12 » Wed, Jun 25, 2025, 6:34 AM UTC

franga2000 wrote: post #30

jesprenj wrote: post #7

I never saw anyone use T9 in Slovenia, but from being online and watching american movies I noticed it's used almost universally. I guess it works for typing English but Slovene didn't get such good support. Plus it was never enabled by default so people (myself included) just learned to get fast fingers.

I remember disabling T9 as the first step when getting any "new" phone, so it must've been enabled on some. Then again, I rarely got phones new from the store, so this might have been because they were factory reset. I don't think I ever really knew what it was, other than "that thing that made typing difficult". I doubt any phone shipped with a Slovene dictionary for T9, so it was probably just doing its best trying…

I want to provide a counterexample: my Sony Ericsson W... something had a decent T9 Slovene dictionary. If I manage to turn it on, I'll let you know:)

Re: Resurrecting flip phone typing as a Linux driver

#73

Post by rfl890 » Wed, Jun 25, 2025, 8:45 PM UTC

stronglikedan wrote: post #39

szszrk wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why is a flip phone in the title? That was not specific to flip phones at all.

Because vastly more people will know what "flip phone typing" is over "T9 typing".

YMMV. I rocked a flip phone (ZTE Cymbal) for 5 years and only just recently learnt it was called T9, in modern days I don't think it's such a common term.