Trainingless Voice Dialing Arrives on the iPhone

Trainingless Voice Dialing Arrives on the iPhone

Friday, November 14, 2008 - by Michael Santo
It was really annoying, despite all the snazziness of the iPhone 3G, that it didn't include a voice dial application built-into the OS. After all, most of the smartphones we had been using of late (mostly Windows Mobile) had voice dialing built-in.

And while some never use voice dialing, in reality, for safety reasons, voice dialing is the only way to go --- at least while driving. And sometimes, for legal reasons, too, if the state you are in requires a hands-free setup while driving. If a cop catches you holding up your cell phone to dial, he may feel you are violating the hands-free law.

When we first bought the iPhone 3G, there were some voice dialing apps available through the App Store, but they all required training. Training means you have to provide a "sample" audio clip for each contact for the program to match with. Yeah, right, people with tons of contacts are really going to do that.

Of course,we  kind of gave up for a while, and when we heard about this application, Say Who, from developer DialDirections, we took another look in the App Store.

Now, Say Who is free. That alone gives it a major leg-up on any other similar app. And, according to the reviews, the darn thing is extremely accurate. Set it to "autodial" and it will dial without confirmation, otherwise it will wait for you to confirm.

And when we say free, the app's FAQ does indicate they are exploring other options: ad-supported or subscription, so it may not be free forever. One nit we have is that you have to press and hold an on-screen button while speaking; we prefer to just hit a button and then speak; the "hold" action means more distraction (and of course, as we said the reason we want voice dialing is to help while driving).

Say Who currently has a **** rating on the App Store.

What we noticed also is, despite the fact that a number of sites have been implying this is the first voice dialing app that doesn't require training (e.g., here), that's not the case. There are now a number of voice dialing apps now in the App Store that duplicate that functionality.


Examples:
VoiceBox Dialer (free), average rating ****
Fonix iSpeak ($9.99), average rating *** 1/2 - the highest priced, but their upcoming feature list is compelling, plus the company is well known for its speech recognition technology and even licenses it to other companies

There are others, but they had ratings of 2 1/2 or less stars (Voice Lookup, VoiceThis Voice Dialer, AdelaVoice Voice Dialer, etc.). We wouldn't go there, particularly since there's no try before buy (hint, hint Apple) at the App Store.
Via: App Store | News Archive | Tags: iPhone, Phone, Ice
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Comments

By 3vi1 on Nov 14, 2008

Trainingless?

*I* can't understand some of the people I work with, so how could a phone app?

By bob_on_the_cob on Nov 14, 2008

3vi1:

Trainingless?

*I* can't understand some of the people I work with, so how could a phone app?

LMAO same here. Have you ever used the voice typing in Vista. Cut it on open wordpad and have a conversation with someone. Hilarity will ensue.

By 3vi1 on Nov 14, 2008

bob_on_the_cob:

Have you ever used the voice typing in Vista.

I can't say I've had the pleasure, but I played with Microsoft's voice APIs for many years, and I can completely agree with you:  There will be miscommunication, and with an untrained app, it will happen at least once every 20 words.

By bob_on_the_cob on Nov 15, 2008

3vi1:

There will be miscommunication, and with an untrained app, it will happen at least once every 20 words.

It does get better over time.

 

By Anonymous on Nov 15, 2008

Wow, that is like way too cool!

jess

http://www.crypted.de.tc

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