Hasta La Gadget!

For those of us who aren’t fans of swipe gestures, the highlight of BlackBerry 10 is undoubtedly a unique keyboard that’s often a step ahead of its user. It’s a good thing for this last camp that RIM was just granted the final version of a related patent for logic-based text prediction. Instead of simply hunting for typos, the patented keyboard guesses the next word based either on the context of the words around it or on other criteria, like common expressions. About the only time the technique doesn’t predict words is for passwords — RIM would rather not be that clever. While there looks to be a few differences in the practical implementation of the patent as we’ve seen it in a pre-release BlackBerry 10, theory and reality are close enough that RIM won’t be worried about anyone else poaching its seemingly mind-reading technology anytime soon.

Update: We’ve dug deeper, and it’s more focused on simple frequency logic and auto-complete shortcuts (think “ttyl” generating “talk to you later”) rather than anything too complex. BlackBerry 10 isn’t so secure, then, although these are still quite important typing techniques.

Filed under: Cellphones

RIM gets patent for logic-based text prediction, BlackBerry 10 keyboard now preserved for the ages (update: not so ambitious) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Jul 2012 22:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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