Ladies and Gentlemen it is my pleasure to present to you, what in my opinion is going to be the next killer application for S60 devices. In the comments section of the QWERTY v. T9 speed test article, Tim mentioned an application called T9 Nav which I have only been able to try it today and it has blown my mind.

T9 Nav is a mobile search application that lets you find anything on your phone by just typing in the first few letters of whatever you’re looking for. As soon as you press a number, it starts looking for anything on your device that matches the numbers or the letters on that key. For example if you press “2” it finds any contacts, calendar items, ringtones, applications, bookmarked websites or anything else beginning with 2, a, b or c. Read on for a complete run through.

Once installed, much like Vista, the application indexes all your files be it songs, contacts, bookmarks and so on. It features an auto start option so you don’t need to worry about launching it everytime, it however remains visible in the open applications and doesn’t feature a hidden mode so far.

The place where the application is especially useful is if you have a lot of applications installed and they are kept within folders and sub folders; now in order to launch them all you need to do is key in their name. This application also betters Handy Taskman’s search and launch functionality by giving direct, from the standby screen, access.

As you press more keys it continues to refine the results, when you see what you want in the list, just click on it and the application will take you there. Here are a few screengrabs from my play with T9 Nav.

1. Trying to open ‘Notes’ by typing its T9 equivalent.

2. An example of filtration with increased typing.

3. Reaching ‘Clock’ with three key presses.

4. Contacts, my name.

5. The ‘-’ in the name doesn’t matter.

OTHER EXAMPLES

(While this seems to work for most applications, on the N82 curiously the Music player and Camera don’t show up when their name is keyed in. Most likely this is a Beta issue and will be sorted out. If something else doesn’t work, please leave a comment.)

The newer Eseries devices like the E71 have brought such access from the standby screen functionality to contacts, in a very polished manner but this is taking it to a completely new level.

I still dig the class and options a simple right press of the D pad gives but for those Nseries siblings or other S60 devices who lack such functionality, T9 Nav is god sent. The application is still in Beta and you might experience certain problems while using it, but fortunately the developers are listening and also be sure to send in feedback or suggessions so that we may have a better application.

Download Link.

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