Voice dialing?

[sandman42]

Has anyone seen anything that indicates whether the iPhone is going to support any kind of voice dialing or voice recognition? I really like what I've seen of the iPhone so far -- I would buy it just for the visual voice mail!

Problem for me is, my existing phone has pretty sophisticated voice commands that I really like, and will be hard for me to give up. I'd really like to know what, if anything, Apple plans for the iPhone.

 

[ero87]

i hope it has that too, though i'm more interested in how speed-dialing will work.

right now, i can just press 3-send and i'm calling my house. it takes 1 second. as of now, the iphone looks more complicated.

 

[sandman42]

That's a good point...

on my current phone, as with others I've owned, I can call certain numbers just by pressing and holding one number key. That's the fastest way of all on my phone, and I use it all the time for my most frequently called numbers. This seems to be a pretty common method -- I doubt Apple would miss something that easy and obvious.

Still wondering about that voice command/dialing, though. My current phone can compare what I say against the entire content of my phone book, without having to record any 'voice names' in advance. That means it can 'read' what I type in my contact list, figure out how it's pronounced, and compare that against what I say later. That's really pretty amazing if you think about it. Sometimes you have to work with how it 'thinks' a name is pronounced (it thinks my buddy Liam's name is pronounced "lime"), but generally it works really well. I hope the iPhone can compete, because between this and my BT headset, I often don't need to touch my phone at all -- it just needs to be within range.

 

[Rodimus Prime]

on my current phone, as with others I've owned, I can call certain numbers just by pressing and holding one number key. That's the fastest way of all on my phone, and I use it all the time for my most frequently called numbers. This seems to be a pretty common method -- I doubt Apple would miss something that easy and obvious.

Still wondering about that voice command/dialing, though. My current phone can compare what I say against the entire content of my phone book, without having to record any 'voice names' in advance. That means it can 'read' what I type in my contact list, figure out how it's pronounced, and compare that against what I say later. That's really pretty amazing if you think about it. Sometimes you have to work with how it 'thinks' a name is pronounced (it thinks my buddy Liam's name is pronounced "lime"), but generally it works really well. I hope the iPhone can compete, because between this and my BT headset, I often don't need to touch my phone at all -- it just needs to be within range.

I honestly do not like that method on phones voice commands. The big reason is quite often it screws up the names or it just makes them to damn long because I pretty much always put last names on there and a lot of those have odd sounds to them any how.

I like the pre-recording way of doing it because then I can set up the phone to dial with how I would say it. So I enter some on in my phone as John Doe but I just want to say john when I call it. cannot do that with the ones that read the entire content of the name but if I pre record I just have to say John and it dials that number. My last phone was that phone book kind and I hated it to the point that I never used it. my current phone has the pre recorded system and i do use it quite a bit.

 

[SpinThis!]

Apple's had a pretty good history with text-to-speech. One of the big features of Leopard at WWDC was Universal Access including a better text-to-speech manager/voices (and voice recognition I think). I would not be surprised to see these features integrated into the iPhone at some point.

Voice recognition never worked that well (at least for me) but that press-and-hold speed-dial (or just the number and call) is a must-have feature (1 for voicemail, etc). Apple would be foolish not to include that. I'd imagine the favorites feature would be integrated in some way to speed dial.

 

[ero87]

Apple's had a pretty good history with text-to-speech. One of the big features of Leopard at WWDC was Universal Access including a better text-to-speech manager/voices (and voice recognition I think). I would not be surprised to see these features integrated into the iPhone at some point.

Voice recognition never worked that well (at least for me) but that press-and-hold speed-dial (or just the number and call) is a must-have feature (1 for voicemail, etc). Apple would be foolish not to include that. I'd imagine the favorites feature would be integrated in some way to speed dial.

well 1 would not be voicemail anymore, thanks to the godsent visual voicemail

the thing with speeddial is that it's inherently less convenient becuase you need to press two buttons just to get to the keypad/favorites/whatever. it'd be great if there was some form of speed-dial straight from the home screen, that'd be a huge feature.

ahhhi wannt one!

 

[sandman42]

well 1 would not be voicemail anymore, thanks to the godsent visual voicemail

I can't agree more. Believe it or not, that is probably the biggest selling point of the iPhone for me. How I hate the existing, linear voice mail systems! I dread even listening to my voice mail because of it. And that voice: "You have.... ...ONE... ...new message sent... ...TODAY... ...at... ...five... ...THIRTY... ...seven." I've said for years, "I just want to push a button and hear the message!" Finally someone made it happen, and I'm glad it turned out to be Apple.

Just to keep on topic, though: if it doesn't have voice recognition of some kind, that could be a deal breaker for me.

 

[Sean7512]

I think that I know how the one touch dialing is going to work. You will be able to add contacts to the home screen. That way, all you do is tap the name you want, I think that would make GREAT use of the unused space on the home screen. What do you guys think?

About voice recognition, I'm sure that does have it because isn't that built into Mac OS X? Time will ultimately tell, but I'd be shocked if it wasn't on there.

 

[spicyapple]

Voice dialing on my RAZR never works as well as I would like, but having said that, I see no reason why Apple couldn't add that feature if they feel it's something a lot of people would find useful.

But it might just be faster to bring up a "favourite contact list" and being able to just click on their portrait icon for fast dialing.

 

[Lassaline]

California Handsfree Cellphone Law - July 2008

If they don't it'll be against the law for Steve Job's to use it in his car in his home state of California next year.
Gathered from Govonor's Highway Safety Association
(Eff. 7/2008, all drivers must use hands free device, except for emergencies, and drivers of emergency response vehicles (commercial vehicle drivers exempted from requirement until 2011).
And you can forget about using one in a whole lot of states if you happen to drive a schoolbus for a living!

 

[jeffreyfort]

voice dialing is a must for me. Palm's voice dialing on a Treo 650 works great for me and it need not be "trained." That is, I just call out the name of the contact and it dials it. this is a must for me so I hope iPhone has something similar.

 

[sandman42]

voice dialing is a must for me. Palm's voice dialing on a Treo 650 works great for me and it need not be "trained." That is, I just call out the name of the contact and it dials it. this is a must for me so I hope iPhone has something similar.

That's how it is with my Verizon RAZR (for some reason the RAZR with other carriers works differently). The phone can 'read' my address book, and compare that to what I say without having to record any 'voice names' or anything. It's a little quirky sometimes, but mostly it works well. You can also say 'send text to _____' to send a text msg or 'go to <app>' to start an application, as well as several other voice commands. I really like it. I really hope the iPhone has something comparable.

 

[neven]

"all drivers must use hands free device, except for emergencies."

That's what you use the already announced iPhone headphones (with squeezable remote button) for.

I love the idea of contacts on the main screen. If you ended up with, say, 10 or 15, the icons could scale down to fit (down to a certain readable minimum, of course).

One thing to keep in mind, also, is that we may all need to get used to using our phones slightly differently than we do now. You may just have to get used to looking at your phone to make calls.

Here's an analogy: I could use my Walkman and, later, my Discman without looking down. They had a few big, recognizable buttons, and I could click them in the dark. This is something I lost when I moved to iPod. But so what? I gained a whole lot more. Complaining about the convenience of speed dial may some day become as outdated as complaining about not being able to rewind a cassette tape manually, with a pen.

 

[sandman42]

One thing to keep in mind, also, is that we may all need to get used to using our phones slightly differently than we do now. You may just have to get used to looking at your phone to make calls.

I don't disagree, but right now I can make calls (and check phone status, amongst other things) without touching or looking at my phone. With my BT headset, I don't even have to know exactly where it is. I often just toss it in a pocket or my backpack and can do the thing I do most often with it -- making calls -- by voice. That's really nice. I just hope the iPhone will offer this too. I guess what it comes down to is, if Moto can do it, Apple should be able to do it even better, so I hope they do.

 

[illegalprelude]

im assuming that it will have it cause almost every single dinky ass phone has it so I cant imagine the iPhone not having it