This handy feature of physical flip phone keyboards is also on Android and iOS

Before the original iPhone revolutionized the mobile industry, most handsets came with a keyboard used for making calls and entering text. BlackBerry smartphones came with full QWERTY keyboards, which made entering text easier than on flip phones, which featured basic keyboards that only displayed the numbers 0 through 9, with letters printed on eight of them in groups of three or four. A digital version of this keyboard is now available in the Phone app on Android and iOS devices. Interestingly enough, it comes with T9 dialing support which can make it even easier to call someone whose phone number or contact details you can’t remember.

Multi-tap, the predecessor of T9 dialing technology, served a different purpose on mobile phones: to help users send messages using the letters printed on the numbers 2 through 9. To write “Hello,” you had to press each key several times to get to the desired letter. For the letter “H”, you would press the 4 key twice. For the letter “L”, you would press the 5 key three times. To type the entire word, you would need this sequence of keys: 44, 33, 555, a short pause, 555, 666. The short pause in this case was necessary so that the phone could tell the difference between the two letters “L”.

T9 technology has evolved to enable faster texting. The phone’s software would use a dictionary to guess the desired word, so the word “Hello” would only need the following sequence: 43556. If multiple words could be formed by the sequence, you could choose the correct one. The same principle applies to using T9 dialing on the latest iPhone 17 Pro Max and Galaxy S26 Ultra devices.

Using a keypad to call people with T9 dialing support is even easier than sending a text message. You don’t need a dictionary, because the software should simply match your key combinations to the names in your Contacts app. For example, to find the phone number of a person named “Chris”, you would type 24747. If you have multiple contacts whose name includes Chris saved on the phone, they will appear at the top of the screen to help you choose the right person. To start using T9 dialing, you don’t need to install anything on your Android or iOS device, and you don’t need to dig into the Phone app settings to enable it.

To paraphrase Apple’s well-known motto, the feature “just works” and you can test it out right away. You need a supported device, especially when it comes to iOS, as Apple introduced support for T9 dialing much later than Google. Apple rolled out this feature in 2024 as part of its iOS 18 update. It’s called “Keyboard Search” rather than T9 dialing. If your iPhone hasn’t been updated to iOS 18 or later, you can’t use the technology.

Android users have had a version of T9 dialing on their devices for over a decade before iOS users got it. The HTC Hero dialer came with a Smart Dial feature in 2009. In 2013, Google added a “number pad autocomplete” feature to Android 4.3 Jelly Bean. Since then, many Android vendors have enabled some version of this feature on their devices. You don’t need a Pixel phone to enjoy it.

The T9 dialing feature can be useful when searching for specific contacts. Maybe you have someone’s phone number saved as “John Plumber,” but you don’t remember their first name. Typing “plumber” on the keypad (or 7586237) will bring up the phone number much faster than finding the person in your Contacts or Phone app, and it’s also a bit faster than using the search box in your Phone app. But you don’t need to know this technology from the flip phone era to make calls on Android or iOS. Other methods exist.

For example, you can dial a number from memory if you know it by heart. You can go to the Contacts app on either platform and scroll through the list until you find the person you want to call. You can use the search box in the Phone or Contacts apps to find a specific person. If you are calling someone you talk to frequently, such as a family member, friend, or colleague, you can add them to the Favorites list. The Recents tab in the Phone app also lists your recent calls with these contacts. You can also use Gemini on Android or Siri on iPhone to ask the voice assistant to make a call on your behalf. You can also start calls from messaging apps by selecting a contact and tapping the phone icon that may appear next to their name. Apps that support VoIP will have their own calling features, like WhatsApp, but they will also use the Contacts app on your phone.

There’s no right or wrong way to make a call on Android or iOS, so you don’t need to learn how to dial T9 on your own if you don’t use it. Choose the option you know best.