9 ms·

Google Unveils Awesomely Fast And Accurate Voice Actions For Android

89 points by edw519 16y ago

akadruid 16y ago
There's increasingly mainstream coverage of apps which are incompatible with almost every android phone out there - requiring 2.1 or even 2.2 like this does. I wonder how long it will take for manufacturers to take upgrades seriously? Some of them are still abandoning their handsets as soon as they go out the door. I suspect many of the early adopters are now including this in their purchasing decision when they upgrade.
- sjs382 16y ago
  Most of the handsets on the market are gonna get 2.2. Myself, I couldnt wait so I installed 2.2 myself and I'm loving it.
  - wvenable 16y ago
    What handset are you using?
    - sjs382 16y ago
      HTC Incredible on Verizon. So I'm definitely one of the people who laughs when people on tech forums yell about the carriers loading phones with bloatware and crippling their functionality. The only thing on my phone that wasnt on other SenseUI devices (even before root) was the Droid boot animation and a Verizon tab in the Android Market. And no functionality was crippled. I could always install non-market apps.
- dannyr 16y ago
  Not almost every Android phone. More than 62% of Android phones are either 2.1 or 2.2. http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-versions.html http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-ve...
  - akadruid 16y ago
    That's very interesting - 3 months ago it was just 27%, and Eclair has been out over 9 months. http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/30/only-27-3-of-android-phones-can-use-the-official-twitter-client/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/30/only-27-3-of-android-phones... That's a pretty huge jump. Maybe we're seeing an attitude change for manufacturers already? I suppose some of them are now pushing their third generation of android handset and learning lessons from the second.
    - akadruid 16y ago
      Just noticed the historical chart at the bottom. It seems that practice of releasing updates is definitely increasing - at the beginning of the year, the average version was actually _decreasing_, as already obsolete 1.5 and 1.6 phones were presumably being sold faster than updates were being released. However, it does look like you're still likely to be left in the cold if you've got something other than a HTC or Motorola (particularly an LG - suckers!) or in some cases even if you live outside the US. Also, that's a survey of the android market, which will be slightly skewed towards newer handsets (i.e. people who've had their android for a year probably have every app they might use already)
  - booticon 16y ago
    60% is 2.1, however, and both of these new Android features are only supported in 2.2. I have an Eris that went on sale less than a year ago, and chances are my phone will never be updated to 2.2.
    - dannyr 16y ago
      My guess is that most phones that are still on 1.5 or 1.6 will never be updated to 2.1 or 2.2 If the phone is 2.1 now, it will probably get 2.2 by the end of the year.
      - roel_v 16y ago
        HTC started the rollout of 2.2 for the Desire last week. The Desire is selling well in Europe. I presume they're also rolling it out for the Legend, which was heavily mass-marketed for the last 3-4 months. I have the impression HTC is the main Android vendor in Europe at the moment. Just this rollout will push 2.2 deployment numbers up, I think. As far as I know this is the first mainstream upgrade of phones from 2.1 to 2.2 (apart from the Nexus which is, imo, niche). Or did I miss any?
- whalesalad 16y ago
  You're right... unfortunately most of the mobile device manufacturers out there are still in their mode of creating tons of devices one after another, forgetting about the older ones. They're all scrambling to compete with Apple, but they're completely missing this. Follow the In-N-Out philosophy... do one thing really well and then keep doing it. So many handsets these days are utter garbage. They're all more or less leapfrogging each other with a few pixels there, a few GHz there, +1 MP on the camera. Of course the carriers aren't helping. They all just want to sell units. It's a mess. I'm happy with my Nexus One and T-Mobile for now :)
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    > They all just want to sell units. It's a mess. Actually, they want you to buy a 12 or 24-month plan, The unit is just the bait. In this scenario, it makes sense to build non-upgradable phones so that users opt to get locked in for another year just to get a "free" new phone.
    - eru 16y ago
      I am very glad, that I can just buy separate SIM cards in Europe.
      - technomancy 16y ago
        You can do that with the Nexus One in the US, but people don't. Possibly because the carriers try their damndest to make sure nobody knows about it.
- evilduck 16y ago
  Yep. I have the Samsung Moment that was released last November on Sprint, it got 2.1 but has been officially abandoned. It's my last Samsung phone, failing to maintain the OS is not excusable unless there's a hardware restriction that forces it.
  - TeHCrAzY 16y ago
    Root it. Or just manually upgrade?
    - evilduck 16y ago
      I am rooted. There is no 2.2 release for it.
hyperbovine 16y ago
This is awesome. Nobody will use it. People feel stupid talking to computers. Remember how you embarrassed you felt the last time you were forced to bark at one of those computerized phone operators in a public place? That's this, only all the time. Would you not feel like the biggest doofus in the world whipping out your Droid 2 and performing "note to self [note]" in front of people?
- jamn 16y ago
  (1) I have an iPhone, but I'd really love this type of functionality. I agree I'd probably feel weird saying this to the cell phone. However, when I'm using my earphones with microphone built-in, it's actually extremely handy to issue a command (like switching songs, calling someone, etc) without having to actually whip out the phone. (2) It's interesting that they trust the voice recognition so much that you can say "Call X Company" and they will google it and call it. If they get it wrong, you'll end up dialing some really weird place instead. This is a personal problem I have with the voice recognition commands on my iPhone. I've ended up calling completely unintended people because the phone misunderstands me, and I can only imagine adding an extra factor of error may make things worse. I really hope this type of stuff catches on.
- jim_dot 16y ago
  I just updated my phone with it, cant w8 to be driving and be able to use my phone's functionality without pressing buttons and whatnot
- cryptoz 16y ago
  You are being shortsighted and silly. Here are some excellent examples to show you that speech technology could be pretty damn amazing! The first one <strike>could</strike> will save lives. (While driving) "Should I turn left or right at this intersection?" (While shopping, examining a carton of eggs) "Were these eggs cheaper at the corner store?" (While coding) "Any meetings soon?" ..... Do I need to continue? The applications are endless, assuming it actually works. People have felt stupid in the past because the conversation would go like this: "note to self"....."I said, NOTE TO SELF not NOTICE ELF you fucking idiot machine!" The point is...if Google can do it well, it will take off.
Harj 16y ago
i switched to a nexus one/android recently for a few weeks. the experience made me really appreciate the importance of the intangibles involved in hardware design. if i had to break down the iphone and nexus/android into a comparison of features the latter would have dominated for me. the native gmail search, beautiful google voice integration (i make a lot of international calls home which are super cheap on Goog Voice), turn by turn car navigation, reliable and good voice recognition, instant set up via my google account - each of those individually is a killer feature for me. these new voice actions again sound killer. yet i still found myself yearning for my iphone and i eventually made the switch back. not because there was any one feature i desperately missed but because the overall experience of using it just felt so good. scrolling was flawless. the touchscreen always accurate. switching between apps incredibly smooth. all of these little things added up to a whole greater than sum of its parts (features). you have to presume google spent a long time testing and developing the nexus and android yet it still lags behind the iphone on the intangibles. clearly getting these things right must be a non-trivial process and i'd come to take them for granted after becoming accustomed to the iphone. i won't make that mistake again.
- dschobel 16y ago
  I switched from the iphone to android and I agree with your assessment. Android's UX is good, iPhone's is great. I have high hopes for Android 3.0 (Gingerbread, due in Q4) which is allegedly going to be a major UI revamp. In the mean time I'll enjoy my flash, portable hotspot, tethering and non-ATT carrier :)
  - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
    I'm always suspicious of "I switched from Brand X to Brand Y and Brand X was better for reasons I can't fully articulate as they are almost subconcious". It seems obvious that people moving from one thing to another are going to be affected by small differences that someone coming to it fresh wouldn't be bothered by. The fact that everyone knows Apple has better UI only adds to this, but you can find the same thing in a thousand different Windows to Mac, Windows to Linux, Gnome to KDE or vice versa stories. Some people will get quite irate about how crappy the new UI is, even (somewhat tellingly) if it's a Mac or iPhone that they're moving to after becoming accustomed to something else.
dschobel 16y ago
Is the voice recognition better than what google voice offers in its transcription service? Because I've found that to be horribly inaccurate.
- brettnak 16y ago
  I just tried it out, and I have to say, yes. It's remarkably good. I only tried about 6 phrases but they were all exactly right.
  - wwortiz 16y ago
    I've tried more than 6 and it has been flawless, I'm probably talking like a robot to my phone though. Edit: Spanish streets/cities etc with proper pronunciation don't fair quite so well
- fudge 16y ago
  The voice recognition better than with google voice ohh for cynics transctription service because i've found that to be a horriby inaccurate. (Your question, spoken by a norwegian, transcribed by the new Google Voice Search)
  - bemmu 16y ago
    "is the worst recognition better than google voice overs" (Same question, spoken by a Finn)
- yellowbkpk 16y ago
  I tried it once or twice on the drive home (while waiting for long stoplights) and noticed that it is very sensitive to external noise. Things like the A/C fan motor, the radio, and how far away you are from the microphone all play a big part in recognition quality.
sliverstorm 16y ago
yet another reason to lament my inability to install android on my nokia. Android software + nokia hardware = best of both worlds
- sn 16y ago
  I think there was some progress on the n900.
mike-cardwell 16y ago
I wont believe that it is as accurate as the video portrays until I see it with my own eyes.
- ergo98 16y ago
  I had exactly that impression, but having tried it -- it really is that accurate. They did speed up some of the segments (cutting out the "processing" bit and the confirmation delay sequence), but it was very honest about the accuracy.
- warrenmiller 16y ago
  if you have a british accent it doesn't work. really really doesn't work :(
  - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt-DWr7208A http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt-DWr7208A The Youtube auto-transcription (press the CC button to view) of Glaswegian on this BBC Scotland comedy show is hilariously bad, though I'm not sure how most non-Scottish humans would do either. examples: "not a care in the world" is repeated twice in the audio and translated as "the attack killed a lot of them" the first time and "months of camelot of" the second.
kingkilr 16y ago
I've had a G1 for about a year now... I really want to upgrade at this point.
delackner 16y ago
Speech recognition has been stuck at a high but not good enough plateau for some time. 90% accuracy sounds nice, but is actually totally useless. 99% might be good enough, but no one is there. More likely, 99.9 (for some number of repeating 9s) might be necessary for people to really trust these systems.
- elblanco 16y ago
  I read someplace that human speech recognition is around 90%, I think for speech recognition to be considered "useful" it has to be super-human. I agree something like 99+% is required before it really gets accepted. One problem lots of speech driven systems have too is the lack of discover-ability. There's no interface you can inspect to learn from unless the system gives you a long list of command choices.
jessep 16y ago
I have spent two sessions experimenting with the iPhone voice commands. Both times ended with me with tears of laughter, literally. I have never, not once, during one of these sessions gotten my iphone to do what I wanted to or call the right person. I find it genuinely hilarious though ... and adorable. "My wiiittttlle iphonie wonieee. Are you learning to talkiee walkiieeee?"

89 points by edw519 16y ago

There's increasingly mainstream coverage of apps which are incompatible with almost every android phone out there - requiring 2.1 or even 2.2 like this does. I wonder how long it will take for manufacturers to take upgrades seriously? Some of them are still abandoning their handsets as soon as they go out the door. I suspect many of the early adopters are now including this in their purchasing decision when they upgrade.

sjs382 16y ago
Most of the handsets on the market are gonna get 2.2. Myself, I couldnt wait so I installed 2.2 myself and I'm loving it.
- wvenable 16y ago
  What handset are you using?
  - sjs382 16y ago
    HTC Incredible on Verizon. So I'm definitely one of the people who laughs when people on tech forums yell about the carriers loading phones with bloatware and crippling their functionality. The only thing on my phone that wasnt on other SenseUI devices (even before root) was the Droid boot animation and a Verizon tab in the Android Market. And no functionality was crippled. I could always install non-market apps.
dannyr 16y ago
Not almost every Android phone. More than 62% of Android phones are either 2.1 or 2.2. http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-versions.html http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-ve...
- akadruid 16y ago
  That's very interesting - 3 months ago it was just 27%, and Eclair has been out over 9 months. http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/30/only-27-3-of-android-phones-can-use-the-official-twitter-client/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/30/only-27-3-of-android-phones... That's a pretty huge jump. Maybe we're seeing an attitude change for manufacturers already? I suppose some of them are now pushing their third generation of android handset and learning lessons from the second.
  - akadruid 16y ago
    Just noticed the historical chart at the bottom. It seems that practice of releasing updates is definitely increasing - at the beginning of the year, the average version was actually _decreasing_, as already obsolete 1.5 and 1.6 phones were presumably being sold faster than updates were being released. However, it does look like you're still likely to be left in the cold if you've got something other than a HTC or Motorola (particularly an LG - suckers!) or in some cases even if you live outside the US. Also, that's a survey of the android market, which will be slightly skewed towards newer handsets (i.e. people who've had their android for a year probably have every app they might use already)
- booticon 16y ago
  60% is 2.1, however, and both of these new Android features are only supported in 2.2. I have an Eris that went on sale less than a year ago, and chances are my phone will never be updated to 2.2.
  - dannyr 16y ago
    My guess is that most phones that are still on 1.5 or 1.6 will never be updated to 2.1 or 2.2 If the phone is 2.1 now, it will probably get 2.2 by the end of the year.
    - roel_v 16y ago
      HTC started the rollout of 2.2 for the Desire last week. The Desire is selling well in Europe. I presume they're also rolling it out for the Legend, which was heavily mass-marketed for the last 3-4 months. I have the impression HTC is the main Android vendor in Europe at the moment. Just this rollout will push 2.2 deployment numbers up, I think. As far as I know this is the first mainstream upgrade of phones from 2.1 to 2.2 (apart from the Nexus which is, imo, niche). Or did I miss any?
whalesalad 16y ago
You're right... unfortunately most of the mobile device manufacturers out there are still in their mode of creating tons of devices one after another, forgetting about the older ones. They're all scrambling to compete with Apple, but they're completely missing this. Follow the In-N-Out philosophy... do one thing really well and then keep doing it. So many handsets these days are utter garbage. They're all more or less leapfrogging each other with a few pixels there, a few GHz there, +1 MP on the camera. Of course the carriers aren't helping. They all just want to sell units. It's a mess. I'm happy with my Nexus One and T-Mobile for now :)
- rbanffy 16y ago
  > They all just want to sell units. It's a mess. Actually, they want you to buy a 12 or 24-month plan, The unit is just the bait. In this scenario, it makes sense to build non-upgradable phones so that users opt to get locked in for another year just to get a "free" new phone.
  - eru 16y ago
    I am very glad, that I can just buy separate SIM cards in Europe.
    - technomancy 16y ago
      You can do that with the Nexus One in the US, but people don't. Possibly because the carriers try their damndest to make sure nobody knows about it.
evilduck 16y ago
Yep. I have the Samsung Moment that was released last November on Sprint, it got 2.1 but has been officially abandoned. It's my last Samsung phone, failing to maintain the OS is not excusable unless there's a hardware restriction that forces it.
- TeHCrAzY 16y ago
  Root it. Or just manually upgrade?
  - evilduck 16y ago
    I am rooted. There is no 2.2 release for it.

hyperbovine 16y ago

This is awesome. Nobody will use it. People feel stupid talking to computers. Remember how you embarrassed you felt the last time you were forced to bark at one of those computerized phone operators in a public place? That's this, only all the time. Would you not feel like the biggest doofus in the world whipping out your Droid 2 and performing "note to self [note]" in front of people?

jamn 16y ago
(1) I have an iPhone, but I'd really love this type of functionality. I agree I'd probably feel weird saying this to the cell phone. However, when I'm using my earphones with microphone built-in, it's actually extremely handy to issue a command (like switching songs, calling someone, etc) without having to actually whip out the phone. (2) It's interesting that they trust the voice recognition so much that you can say "Call X Company" and they will google it and call it. If they get it wrong, you'll end up dialing some really weird place instead. This is a personal problem I have with the voice recognition commands on my iPhone. I've ended up calling completely unintended people because the phone misunderstands me, and I can only imagine adding an extra factor of error may make things worse. I really hope this type of stuff catches on.
jim_dot 16y ago
I just updated my phone with it, cant w8 to be driving and be able to use my phone's functionality without pressing buttons and whatnot
cryptoz 16y ago
You are being shortsighted and silly. Here are some excellent examples to show you that speech technology could be pretty damn amazing! The first one <strike>could</strike> will save lives. (While driving) "Should I turn left or right at this intersection?" (While shopping, examining a carton of eggs) "Were these eggs cheaper at the corner store?" (While coding) "Any meetings soon?" ..... Do I need to continue? The applications are endless, assuming it actually works. People have felt stupid in the past because the conversation would go like this: "note to self"....."I said, NOTE TO SELF not NOTICE ELF you fucking idiot machine!" The point is...if Google can do it well, it will take off.

Harj 16y ago

i switched to a nexus one/android recently for a few weeks. the experience made me really appreciate the importance of the intangibles involved in hardware design. if i had to break down the iphone and nexus/android into a comparison of features the latter would have dominated for me. the native gmail search, beautiful google voice integration (i make a lot of international calls home which are super cheap on Goog Voice), turn by turn car navigation, reliable and good voice recognition, instant set up via my google account - each of those individually is a killer feature for me. these new voice actions again sound killer. yet i still found myself yearning for my iphone and i eventually made the switch back. not because there was any one feature i desperately missed but because the overall experience of using it just felt so good. scrolling was flawless. the touchscreen always accurate. switching between apps incredibly smooth. all of these little things added up to a whole greater than sum of its parts (features). you have to presume google spent a long time testing and developing the nexus and android yet it still lags behind the iphone on the intangibles. clearly getting these things right must be a non-trivial process and i'd come to take them for granted after becoming accustomed to the iphone. i won't make that mistake again.

dschobel 16y ago
I switched from the iphone to android and I agree with your assessment. Android's UX is good, iPhone's is great. I have high hopes for Android 3.0 (Gingerbread, due in Q4) which is allegedly going to be a major UI revamp. In the mean time I'll enjoy my flash, portable hotspot, tethering and non-ATT carrier :)
- ZeroGravitas 16y ago
  I'm always suspicious of "I switched from Brand X to Brand Y and Brand X was better for reasons I can't fully articulate as they are almost subconcious". It seems obvious that people moving from one thing to another are going to be affected by small differences that someone coming to it fresh wouldn't be bothered by. The fact that everyone knows Apple has better UI only adds to this, but you can find the same thing in a thousand different Windows to Mac, Windows to Linux, Gnome to KDE or vice versa stories. Some people will get quite irate about how crappy the new UI is, even (somewhat tellingly) if it's a Mac or iPhone that they're moving to after becoming accustomed to something else.

dschobel 16y ago

Is the voice recognition better than what google voice offers in its transcription service? Because I've found that to be horribly inaccurate.

brettnak 16y ago
I just tried it out, and I have to say, yes. It's remarkably good. I only tried about 6 phrases but they were all exactly right.
- wwortiz 16y ago
  I've tried more than 6 and it has been flawless, I'm probably talking like a robot to my phone though. Edit: Spanish streets/cities etc with proper pronunciation don't fair quite so well
fudge 16y ago
The voice recognition better than with google voice ohh for cynics transctription service because i've found that to be a horriby inaccurate. (Your question, spoken by a norwegian, transcribed by the new Google Voice Search)
- bemmu 16y ago
  "is the worst recognition better than google voice overs" (Same question, spoken by a Finn)
yellowbkpk 16y ago
I tried it once or twice on the drive home (while waiting for long stoplights) and noticed that it is very sensitive to external noise. Things like the A/C fan motor, the radio, and how far away you are from the microphone all play a big part in recognition quality.

sliverstorm 16y ago

yet another reason to lament my inability to install android on my nokia. Android software + nokia hardware = best of both worlds

sn 16y ago
I think there was some progress on the n900.

mike-cardwell 16y ago

I wont believe that it is as accurate as the video portrays until I see it with my own eyes.

ergo98 16y ago
I had exactly that impression, but having tried it -- it really is that accurate. They did speed up some of the segments (cutting out the "processing" bit and the confirmation delay sequence), but it was very honest about the accuracy.
warrenmiller 16y ago
if you have a british accent it doesn't work. really really doesn't work :(
- ZeroGravitas 16y ago
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt-DWr7208A http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt-DWr7208A The Youtube auto-transcription (press the CC button to view) of Glaswegian on this BBC Scotland comedy show is hilariously bad, though I'm not sure how most non-Scottish humans would do either. examples: "not a care in the world" is repeated twice in the audio and translated as "the attack killed a lot of them" the first time and "months of camelot of" the second.

kingkilr 16y ago

I've had a G1 for about a year now... I really want to upgrade at this point.

delackner 16y ago

Speech recognition has been stuck at a high but not good enough plateau for some time. 90% accuracy sounds nice, but is actually totally useless. 99% might be good enough, but no one is there. More likely, 99.9 (for some number of repeating 9s) might be necessary for people to really trust these systems.

elblanco 16y ago
I read someplace that human speech recognition is around 90%, I think for speech recognition to be considered "useful" it has to be super-human. I agree something like 99+% is required before it really gets accepted. One problem lots of speech driven systems have too is the lack of discover-ability. There's no interface you can inspect to learn from unless the system gives you a long list of command choices.

jessep 16y ago

I have spent two sessions experimenting with the iPhone voice commands. Both times ended with me with tears of laughter, literally. I have never, not once, during one of these sessions gotten my iphone to do what I wanted to or call the right person. I find it genuinely hilarious though ... and adorable. "My wiiittttlle iphonie wonieee. Are you learning to talkiee walkiieeee?"