Predictive text is implemented on the Iridium Extreme and affects the following areas:
- Creating an SMS/Email
- Adding Notes to an existing Phonebook entry
- Entering the Name field for a Phonebook entry (LetterWide only)
Predictive text is not set on a new phone by default, it must be enabled. To do so, start at the main screen and:
- Press the Menu softkey
- Select “Setup” (6 clicks down)
- In the Setup menu, select “Language” (4 clicks down)
- In the Language menu, select “Text entry”
In the Text entry menu, Multi-tap is the default selection. Multi-tap has no language sensitivity, other than the fact that it provides standard Western characters. To choose predictive text, select one of:
- English
- Français
- Español
Once you have made this change, all SMS entry and entry of contacts incorporate Predictive Text capabilities specific to the selected language. Once selected, select the “Back” option twice, then scroll up to “Messages” to use Predictive Text entry for messaging. To change back to “Multi-Tap” in the future, you need to adjust this setting.
Predictive text entry has the following modes:
- WordWise (Ww) which provides word prediction for users who like dictionary-based methods
- LetterWise (Lw) for letter-by-letter prediction for situations where word-based prediction doesn’t afford the flexibility that may be required in some situations.
Special character entry has the following modes:
- Punctuation (#?@) for entry of punctuation and special symbols
- Digit (123) for entry of numbers
For all alphabetic languages:
To complete a message, you may need to switch between these five main modes of text entry during message creation:
- WordWise (Ww) – word predictive text entry
- LetterWise (Lw) – letter-by-letter predictive text entry
- Punctuation (#?@) – punctuation entry (non-predictive)
- Digit (123) – number entry (non-predictive)
- Multi-tap (abc) traditional text entry (non-predictive)
The appropriate text entry mode can be selected by pressing the Convenience key on the side of the Iridium Extreme. The active text entry mode will be displayed on the screen as indicated in the illustrations on the following page.
LetterWise Text mode #
Press the Convenience key until you are in LetterWise (Lw) text mode. Press the key with the desired letter. If it doesn’t appear, press the Next key until it does. Use the right soft key (Clear) for backspace and Space key for space. Press the Shift key to switch between lower and upper case.
Note: Apostrophe (‘) for English entry and hyphen (-) for Russian entry are treated as letters (that is, can be predicted by LetterWise) and are found on key 5.
Example: Entering “don’t”
WordWise Text Mode #
Press the Convenience key until the “ww” symbol appears in the top left corner of the screen indicating that you have entered WordWise text entry mode. To enter text in WordWise, press the key containing the first letter you want to type ONLY ONCE.
If the correct letter does not appear at first, continue by pressing the key that corresponds to the next letter in your text, and so on.
After pressing the last key in the sequence, the word should appear. However, if the word is underlined (or highlighted), it is possible that an alternate word (which happens to require the same key presses) appeared instead. Just press Next key until the desired word appears.
If the word you are entering is not found in any dictionary you can switch to LetterWise mode by pressing the convenience key and viewing the top left corner of the screen.
During use of WordWise, the 1 key can be used to insert punctuation without changing text entry modes. To insert punctuation, press the 1 key and then add the appropriate punctuation by using the Next key. As an alternative, you may also access Options using the left soft key to select “Insert symbol” or “Enter digits” during WordWise use. This also applies to LetterWise use.
Example: Entering “red” #
Digit Mode (123) #
There may be times when you need to add numbers into a message that you are composing. Digit mode allows you to use the number keys to enter digits, similar to dialing a phone call. To enter digit mode, press the Convenience key until the 123 indicator appears on the upper left corner of the screen. Enter the numbers required for your message and then use the Convenience key to return to the desired text entry mode to complete the rest of the message.
Digit mode may be entered either by pressing the Convenience key on the side of the phone, or with the Options menu in the Create Message editor to “Enter digits”.
Pucntuation Mode (#?@) #
Punctuation mode may be entered either by pressing the Convenience key on the side of the phone, or with the Options menu in the Create Message editor to “Insert symbol”. During use of WordWise, the 1 key can be used to insert punctuation without changing text entry modes.
In Punctuation mode, symbols are spread across all keys based on their shape to help you remember which symbol is on each key (see table on following page). For example: ! is on 1 key, ? is on key 2
If there is more than one symbol on a key, press the Next key to get the others.
Once you have selected the appropriate symbol for your message, you may return to your preferred text entry mode by pressing the side convenience key and viewing the top left corner of the screen.
