iOS 18 will include texting tech from the 90s to make dialing numbers faster than ever

[iMore.com]

iOS 18 brings a nostalgic throwback for anyone who used to own a non-touchscreen Nokia or Motorola phone in the 90s.

iOS 18 will include texting tech from the 90s to make dialing numbers faster than ever : Read more

 

[SvenJ]

You are either misremembering, or misinformed. T9 was not a dialing method, it was a texting method. You didn't call MOM by punching 666. There was no intelligence or predictive capability in those old phones. You texted by using the 10 key pad and the positions of the letters under each number. You paused between letters. If you wanted to text the word MOM, you hit 6 666 6. The center 666 is because the O is the third letter under the number 6, MNO. If you wanted to text the word JOHN you had to input 5 666 44 66. Does this seem slow? Yea, but 9.6Kbps wasn't fast either, and there were those (mostly teenage girls) who could T9 with the phone under their desks.
If Apple has added some predictive capability to the keypad that helps you narrow down contacts just hitting the number keys, cool, but that's not T9.

 

[EdwinG]

You are either misremembering, or misinformed. T9 was not a dialing method, it was a texting method. You didn't call MOM by punching 666. There was no intelligence or predictive capability in those old phones. You texted by using the 10 key pad and the positions of the letters under each number. You paused between letters. If you wanted to text the word MOM, you hit 6 666 6. The center 666 is because the O is the third letter under the number 6, MNO. If you wanted to text the word JOHN you had to input 5 666 44 66. Does this seem slow? Yea, but 9.6Kbps wasn't fast either, and there were those (mostly teenage girls) who could T9 with the phone under their desks.
If Apple has added some predictive capability to the keypad that helps you narrow down contacts just hitting the number keys, cool, but that's not T9.

What you described is not T9, but multi-press (or on my very old and lost phone as “abc” mode).

T9 is the matching of the digits to a dictionary of words. So “mom” would have been “666”, and John – should it be present in the dictionary — “5646”.

T9 (predictive text) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[FFR]

You are either misremembering, or misinformed. T9 was not a dialing method, it was a texting method. You didn't call MOM by punching 666. There was no intelligence or predictive capability in those old phones. You texted by using the 10 key pad and the positions of the letters under each number. You paused between letters. If you wanted to text the word MOM, you hit 6 666 6. The center 666 is because the O is the third letter under the number 6, MNO. If you wanted to text the word JOHN you had to input 5 666 44 66. Does this seem slow? Yea, but 9.6Kbps wasn't fast either, and there were those (mostly teenage girls) who could T9 with the phone under their desks.
If Apple has added some predictive capability to the keypad that helps you narrow down contacts just hitting the number keys, cool, but that's not T9.

That’s multi-tap. t9 is predictive, it’s basically multi-tap with less clicks.

However certain manufacturers added t9 directly to the dialer on resistive touch screen phones and smartphones in the 90s and aughts.

These devices were very popular in Asia, Africa, Australia and Latin America, t9 dialer was very popular in those markets.