One of the upcoming BlackBerry 10 OS highlights that RIM has shown off is the “word prediction” that’s built into the keyboard. This BB10 keyboard will display words that you might possibly use in the text, BBM or email, but over time it learns your style and predicts your next word. The words are displayed above the associated letters and to use one you simply flick the entire word upward into your message. Soon after RIM showed this feature off at BlackBerry World 2012 there was a few third party apps the emulated the experience, but now RIM has been awarded a patent (8,224,393) called “handheld electronic device with text disambiguation.”
The patent application was filed on May 5th, which was right after BlackBerry World 2012. According to the description the patent encompasses largely of what they’ve already communicated, specifically that “the output is based largely upon the frequency, i.e., the likelihood that a user intended a particular output, but various features of the device provide additional variants that are not based solely on frequency and rather are provided by various logic structures resident on the device. The device enables editing during text entry and also provides a learning function that allows the disambiguation function to adapt to provide a customized experience for the user.”
So now with the patent protected, all RIM really has to do is deliver the final product to the world.
