Hacker News Reader

Comment by bkudria | Hacker News Reader

Actually kinda cool.

Does anyone actually use Voice Control on an iPhone, or any other speech recognition tech? I've never seen it used in real life except in IVR systems.

View on HN

The time picker widget on stock Android is pretty horrid, so I regularly use voice recognition to set alarms. It's much easier to long-press a single button and then say "Set alarm for 8:30 PM."

I've tried to use it on my Android phone, but it hates my English accent. If I talk to it in a borderline-racist American accent, it does better, but not enough for me to actually get anything done.

I'm curious which American accent sounds "borderline-racist".

As an American, I don't think I've ever seen anyone offended by an attempt at an American accent. I actually find it hilarious to hear British people attempting an American accent, because it's one of the rare times you can actually get a sense of what your own accent sounds like. The minor differences are accentuated when someone tries hard, and it's much easier to notice them.

Back on topic, didn't Google roll something about Voice Command customization out a while ago? I'd been using it when I can so it would "learn", but I guess that's pointless if it doesn't. It does seem to have gotten better for me since the start, but I don't know if that's personalization or just Google improving it. I mostly use it for searching or dialing, so I can't speak for its accuracy at longer commands like texting, however.

Yes. I use it to make calls and control music without taking my gloves off on a cold day.

I love voice control with my iphone. I wear a bluetooth headset a lot, it's nice to be able to just touch the headset, say "call <person>" and it'll call them.

Oh, you're one of Them.

I use it all the time. Long press the search key from any app, say "Call Papa John". Does a GPS fix, search, lookup and call all in about 3 seconds.

I didn't know you could use it for alarms. That's brilliant and would be great for one-off alarms.

I also use it for short text messages if I don't have a second hand free or can type it out for whatever reason. It works reasonably well, but I've been letting it adapt to my voice pattern so maybe it works better for me than others.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com