If you've been wowed by the 'find things as you type' technology showed off in the forthcoming Palm Pre, note that you've been able to do this for ages on S60 with a third party utility, SkyeQuiKey. But now there's a new challenger, T9Nav, claiming more functions and more speed. Matching contacts, bookmarks, applications, web services and more all by typing in T9-style on the standby screen, and currently free, it sounds too good to be true. I investigate in my review of T9Nav.
Read on in the full article.
I had tried this beta version 4-5 months back and was extremely put off by the slow nature of the app on my N82. I tried skye quikey's trial verion and 20 minutes later I had the licenced version with me...
Hmm.... a) I suspect this beta is a different build to the one you tried and b) T9Nav indexes more types of content, so I'd expect it to be a *little* slower.
Both are great apps though, no question.
Wow, that is genuinely fantastic. It seemed to index my phone in seconds and is plenty quick enough for me and now I can open any bookmark without going through the home page. Nice App.
Yeah, I quite like SkyeQuiKey.. will check it out...
I see the beta lasts until 2nd Feb... will check that and then add to the useful apps thread on the N95 forum
Nicebut too bad that it doesnt work on the e71
Bad news: They're not giving it away - it will cost $10 - $20. Why should they...
Good news: It's worth every penny. You may never see the menu again, and its speed is still good, considering how many clicks its saving you.
Actually I have been in close correspondence with the devs of this and they have been a fantastic bunch, specifically addressing my problems and providing me with new versions to test. So I guess they do deserve a little plug 😉
I have an N95 8GB at the moment but I really looking at getting the 5800 xpress music. Do you think there will be any way for these applications to work on a touch screen eventually?
I think it would be more beneficial on a touch screen device without a dpad than it is on the n95, though obviously great in both cases!
I really like SkyeQuiKey, but I've just downloaded T9Nav because of an apparent conflict between SkyeQuiKey and Psiloc Crystal Chinese (when I try to run both on my N95-3, after a day or so pressing any key will crash the handset). So far, I think I prefer SkyeQuiKey (or maybe I'm just used to the way it works - I especially like the shortcut for sending text messages), but T9Nav seems usuable and I'll stick with it if it plays nice with Psiloc Crystal Chinese and isn't too outrageously expensive.
I have an N95 8GB at the moment but I really looking at getting the 5800 xpress music. Do you think there will be any way for these applications to work on a touch screen eventually?
If they port it to S60 5th Edition it should work fine, and I'm sure they'll do that if the 5800, N97 etc sell well.
Well it seems that such an app is a primary need for phones like 5800. But I am not keeping my fingers crossed, as the geniuses at Nokia/S60 have chosen to give a dialing pad without alphabets. I guess that pretty much kills it - the devs of T9Nav and SkyeQuikey will have a hard time overcoming that limitation. And with relatively few 5800s out there right now compared to other s60 devices, I wonder if they can be bothered.
Wow , that's great news. I already knew about this app, but it is good to know that they might be releasing it soon. This is one app I will be definitely buying.
I had liked SkyeQuikey too, but I didn't buy it because the small time limit on the trial had put me off. It was some time ago, but I think it was limited to one day's use. One day is enough to understand how the app functions and to impress on you the value that it will be providing. But it is not sufficient time to determine the effect on your battery life, whether some other phone function will be affected in some way, whether it may cause any sort of instability etc. Especially when you are going to pay a (relatively) high price for a mobile app - It think it was about 25 USD at that time.
On the other hand, I am glad T9Nav is providing a beta- you can follow its development and also have some idea about the points I have mentioned above.
Both apps have its problems on my Nokia E71.
SkyeQuiKey (I hate this name) is nice, but have some annoying problems. The first letter is always "swallowed", that mean that you have always press the first button of your word twice and also other small errors
(good review here: bestofsymbian.com/skyequikey-from-skyestream-review/)
T9nav have nothing of that and seem�s for me the better application. But it shows no applications!?
It shows in the indexes list that it found 103 applications, but when you type it in, there will be no one found. Also the standard applications are not found.
Hope that there will be some updates soon...
By the way, you can use this "type and find" function on your windows desktop with slickrun!
bayden.com/SlickRun/
chromax wrote:By the way, you can use this "type and find" function on your windows desktop with slickrun!
bayden.com/SlickRun/
There's also, "Launchy" for Windows, "Gnome Do" for Linux, and "Quicksilver" for MacOSX.
2nd day with T9Nav. It's definitely not as fast as SkyeQuiKey, but so far it seems to be playing nicely with Psiloc Crystal Chinese.
Despite how superlative my Nokia N95 is, I've been increasingly wooed towards the iPhone lately, particularly with the advent of shapeWriter. But this really restores my faith in the usability of my phone. Within 20 seconds I can see it's going to be the most important app on my phone.
I was also an early beta tester, and was also put off by the slowness of the app compared to SkyeQuiKey. T9Nav had more features, but they came with (for me) an unacceptable hit. I've also never encountered the SkyeQuiKey first-digit-swallowing bug, so that program works well for me.
But didn't FP2 introduce this functionality (at least in terms of contacts search) anyway?
I've had SkyQuiKey on my E90 for ages, but I thought I'd try T9Nav anyway ... even though (unlike SkyQuiKey) it doesn't work on the internal keyboard.
T9Nav finds more things (almost TOO much), but it does have tabs that separate out what it finds into categories if the results are overwhelming (Contacts, Settings, Media, Bookmarks, Applications, Calendar, Keywords).
However, the biggest missing feature in T9Nav for me is the ability to configure keypresses to do something specific with the results - specifically to send an SMS to a contact. In SkyQuiKey I can type 2639, select the right Andy and press the right side of the D-pad and I'm ready to type my message. It's still the fastest way I've found to send one to the right person.
(The only other option I've come across is one of the "Handy" utilities - I forget which one - that allows you to set up an icon to send an SMS to a specific person. I gave up on it when I discovered how fiddly it is to arrange things in it unless you plan meticulously in advance 😉. No doubt there are other options that I haven't come across!)
I did find T9Nav to be a bit unpredictable about telephoning contacts too. Sometimes it seems to insist on dialling the digits you've entered, rather than the phone number of the contact it's found.
So, not bad for free, but I'll be sticking with SkyQuiKey for now.
Julie
I'm planning to buy the N5800XM within the week & well im really going to miss using T9Nav. I love the functionality of it & the speed. I usually haven't come across any application that i love to use so much on any of my S60's so far!
Since one of the initial beta's i've been a avid fan & I do hope they port it to the 5800XM home screen although as someone mentioned, I'm not sure if its going to be easy unless they manage to implement it without using the standard dialer but using the virtual num-pad which has alpha keys too. N97 would not be too bad since it has a actual keyboard below it too.
Im a fan of free app's & I usually find a free software that can do what I want on my phone or my pc but honestly, if it comes to it, I'm willing to buy T9Nav for a reasonable price (that basically doesn't bankrupt me in the process!)