SureType is the the typing style RIM had developed way back for the BlackBerry Pearl; functionally, it was the same ol’ predictive text you might use on a standard T9 keyboard, only instead of three letters per key, you’ve got two. There are a few handsets that have adopted a similar style, the real power is in the more precise prediction that happens with two letters per key, but as you can see from the video, it looks like RIM will be moving the feature to their traditional full-QWERTY BlackBerrys in the next big operating system update. It seems a little backwards to me, since the big selling point of a full, real keyboard is that you don’t have to put your faith in software prediction (which can regularly get things wrong, especially if you make an innocent typo), but as an added option, it could never hurt, and maybe even crank up your typing speed with practice.
[via CB]