Symbian in Motion

Adaptxt by Keypoint Technologies

by Zach at 4:16 pm | November 13th, 2007 | Category: Application Reviews, First Look, Utilities

If you followed my Symbian Smartphone Show coverage or even checked out my Show Recap, then you must have noticed that one of the apps that i was most excited about was Adaptxt. Simply put, I am not a fan of T9. During my time at the Keypoint booth I watched as they showed me what looked to be an advanced and intuitive replacement for the text entry method of old. After finally getting my hands on Adaptxt for S60, it’s nothing short of fantastic! Nothing is perfect and Adaptxt has a few issues that will need to be ironed out but it is well on its way to becoming a must-have app for S60 3rd devices.

Rather than going through a step by step review of Adaptxt as I would with other apps, lets look at how Adaptxt is different from standard T9 entry on our devices. Just like the first time you picked up a modern mobile and had to learn how to use T9, this app does take a bit of getting used to. The difference between this application and standard T9 however is that while you learn Adaptxt, Adaptxt learns you. Sure T9 can learn new words and if you’re lucky you might even get it to remember and suggest one that you will actually use again, but Adaptxt learns YOU. With every new sentence that you type this app is learning your usage patterns and I’m at the point now where I can sometimes enter full sentences in an SMS window without pressing a single letter! How is that possible you might be wondering? Well lets take a look…

As you can see above Adaptxt not only predicts words as you type them but also predicts subsequent words! The first image above shows the app predicting “This” after I type “th”. Once I select the proper word by scrolling to it (if necessary) and pressing right on the d-pad, Adaptxt predicts the next word before I even start typing it by analyzing and referencing my usage patterns. Above you can see that Adaptxt predicted “is” and “a” before I started typing them, so I just kept pressing right on the d-pad to insert the words. Below is an image of my finished sentence and as you can see Adaptxt has already begun predicting my next line.

Now watch this video that shows what happens when i want to type the sentence above for a second time. I was able to type again practically using only the d-pad!

click here to play video

Granted if I had been using Adaptxt for a longer period of time there would be some more word combinations that it learned and typing that same sentence might have taken a few more key presses to type, but you can see the amount of time and keystrokes that this app can potentially save you. Click on the demo video link at the center of the screen beneath the main graphic on the Adaptxt site for a much better quality video.
Another cool feature is the ability to have Adaptxt learn from a file or an existing email/SMS on your device. Using content that you have typed in the past is an excellent way to accelerate the app’s learning process. You can also use this function to quickly teach the app abbreviations and other words that wouldn’t be included in the dictionary.

The Adaptxt options interface gives you access to settings and stats and even shows you detailed info about how many keystrokes you’ve saved while using the app! The display settings allow you to tweak things such as the number of words in the suggestion box and the font size of suggestions. You also have access to your user dictionary here and can delete individual words - something else T9 is sorely missing. Lastly, you can toggle autostart as well as enable/disable Adaptxt from within the Options menu.

Adaptxt is still very new on S60 devices - in fact it won’t even be released until later this week. I’ll post an update once the app is officially released of course, but you can also keep your eye on this page. There are some compatibility issues with third-party applications but I’m hoping they are ironed out quickly. I’ve also had an issue with text boxes in the S60 browser but I’m waiting for some further info. After just under a week with Adaptxt I’m smitten and I’m definitely looking forward to having it replace T9 in every OEM and third-party app on my device. For the time being I’m loving its functionality in the integrated S60 messaging center, SMS Chat and in plenty of other text-hungry apps that won’t be hurting my thumbs ever again!

Note: Initial supported languages include English (US and UK), Finnish, Swedish, French, German, Spanish, Italian with a few others scheduled for the next release.

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