“The Symbian OS brought smartphones to the mainstream and powers among the most advanced devices on the global market,” said Michael Thompson, senior vice president and general manager, Nuance Mobile. “We expect that the adoption of Series 60 phones from Nokia, Samsung, LG and others is going to rapidly expand over the next few years. This proliferation of Symbian’s open source platform provides Nuance with an exciting opportunity to bring our innovative speech, predictive text and handwriting solutions to an increasingly pervasive mobile platform base around the world.”

Nuance’s broad portfolio of speech and predictive text solutions are already available for many Symbian Series 60 devices around the world, including XT9, T9 Nav, and TALKS&ZOOMS.

In addition to its advanced imaging capabilities, the Memoir features Samsung’s unique TouchWiz user interface, a web browser, a music player, and assisted GPS navigation. The Samsung Memoir and the Samsung Behold, also exclusively available from T-Mobile USA, both offer voice command and control capabilities accompanied by the audio-visual feedback that is made possible with VSuite.

VSuite on the Memoir provides many application shortcuts via its “Go To” commands, including:

• “Go to Web” to open the mobile Web browser;
• “Go to Calendar” to input and reference appointments;
• “Go to Ringtones” to find and reset ringtones;
• “Go to Voicemail” to dial voicemail;
• “Go to Games” to discover the games folder;

The Samsung Memoir also features Nuance’s XT9 predictive text input software, which is optimized for mobile devices with advanced input methods such as touchscreens and QWERTY keypads. XT9 allows users to easily switch between input modes, which is particularly valuable for devices like the Memoir. Alternating between numbers, letters, symbols and languages is simple with XT9. XT9 also corrects common misspellings while typing, making it faster and easier to write text messages and emails as well as enter search queries in the Memoir’s full HTML web browser

T9Nav leverages the T9 predictive text technology to simplify navigation and discovery of on- and off-device applications, content and information. By typing with just one key press per letter, consumers can simply bypass complex menu systems and numerous key presses to find applications, settings, games, songs – any feature or service available on the device or on the operator’s network. 

For instance, users can simply press:

• 2 5 2 (a l a) to set their alarm;
• 3 3 6 (d e n) to access a dentist appointment in their calendar;
• 8 9 4 (t w i) to queue up their Twitter application; or,
• 2 3 9 (b e y) to access Beyonce songs on the device, or downloads and ringtones available on the operator’s network.

T9Nav is available today for Series 60 third edition phones via direct to consumer download on the Nokia Software Market. T9Nav also features broad language support, including English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, Polish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Tagalog, Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian.

“As a mobile industry pioneer, we’re continually bringing the best devices to market that not only capture our focus regarding design and leading edge technology, but that also meet the consumer’s need for innovative, easy-to-use solutions,” said Lee Williams, Senior Vice President, Nokia. “By working closely with Nuance on leveraging their broad portfolio of mobile input solutions and to open up a framework for industry collaboration, we’re not only able to take advantage of their predictive text and speech software solutions, but also help in the creation of a vibrant ecosystem – one wherein the mobile applications and services of tomorrow can develop and flourish at a faster rate than otherwise possible.”

“The growing complexity in devices and data service technologies has made it challenging for wireless operator customer support and made it more difficult for subscribers to discover beneficial services,” said J. Gerry Purdy, Ph.D., vice president and chief analyst, Mobile & Wireless Communications at Frost & Sullivan. “Nuance Mobile Care represents an excellent solution for T-Mobile that enables their customers to solve – right on the device – many of the common problems they encounter, from checking their account balance and paying bills to upgrading their data plans and setting up email.”

Nuance Mobile Care solutions can be embedded on a customer’s mobile device over-the-air (OTA) or installed by the manufacturer. The interactive experiences, such as paying a bill, new feature tutorials or relevant service discovery can be created by the operators and pushed OTA to any device that supports Nuance Mobile Care.