Some of you won't agree with this - I know that. But I'll say it anyway. I think Voice Actions are fantastic on a phone. The ability to just tell my S3 what song to play when in the car is great. Telling it to call the Mrs or send a text, brilliant. But the problem is, it's just not all there.
Google's apparently going to try to change that with Jelly Bean's vocalised responses, a better UI and so forth arriving the next day... but on iOS!
Clearly, trying to take Siri on on her home turf. We'll be interested to see how it compares, especially because of the nature of iOS, it may be harder for Google to integrate it to the level that it can perform some native tasks.
Many of you on the Android platform probably have a similar setup to me. You use Speak To It Assistant for one thing, S-Voice for another, Jeannie for something else and so on. Because they all do one or two things very well. But others pretty badly. If only Dragon Dictation's app integrated with the phone better than it does, we'd be laughing.
And then, you've got Siri. Which works well in person.. but I found over bluetooth, when driving with any background noise, was pretty useless.
When I got my Nexus One and that came with Google Voice Search, I was pretty darn impressed. But three years on, it feels like there is still so much work to be done. And it's still so damn fiddly.
If we can just nail this, I think Voice Actions could become something that really does change our usage and our lives. Until then, it'll be a technology I use with so much optimism, but ever so slight disappointment.
Via Engadget
