Being able to communicate effectively while on the move is no longer a luxury, rather has become an important part of daily live in the modern world.
However, when mobile phone technology was developed, the requirement to support real-time, conversational text was not taken into account. While SMS has been very successful, and indeed is used by many deaf and hard of hearing people as a mainstream method of communication, it does not form a substitute for real-time text. Rather, both technologies are complementary. You can read more about the differences between real-time text and other text based forms of communication on the page: Why real-time text? .
In order to overcome some of the barriers to communicating while on the move that textphone users face, RNID has spend a lot of time and effort over many years to develop mobile textphone solutions. This page gives an overview of those developments.
The most recent solution for real-time text while on the move is the TalkByText Mobile Edition application for mobile phones. TalkByText is a family of software clients for real-time text on different platforms. Currently, it comes in four different flavours:
TalkByText Mobile Edition is available for a range of mobile phone handsets. TalkByText is an IP based application, so uses your phone's Internet connection (over, for example, GPRS). Alternatively, you might be able to use TalkByText Web Edition on your handset. More and more mobile devices now offer fully functional webbrowsers and TalkByText Web Edition might then be a useful alternative. In contrast to the mobile edition, the web version does not need a Java VM on your mobile phone.
Another, older, solution for mobile text telephony was the RNID Mobile Textphone for Nokia 9210(i) Communicator. This software only works on the Nokia 9210 and 9210i Communicator, which have now reached the end of their commercial life.
Unlike TalkByText Mobile Edition, which uses the Internet, the 9210(i) solution uses a GSM data channel to connect directly to PSTN legacy textphones. Also, in order to use this software, your network must support this software and your SIM card must be provisioned specifically for this application.
The Mobile Textphone software for the Nokia 9210(i) is no longer available on the market.