Voice dialing with the S3

[Guest erolz]

Had my S3 for a few days now, my first smart phone as well. Generally I like it but what is up with voice dialing ?

In car I use it with a bluetooth headset (very old plantronics one) and all I want to do is push a button on the headset and tell it who to call. I dont want to ask it if I need an unbrealla today or what the weather is like in Coventry or get it to tell me a joke. I just want it to dial someone in my contacts list. This is something I was doing with my mobile phone 12 years ago but could I get my S3 to do it in any way that was near useable in real life ? No I could not and maybe it is just me. First off I have a contact called 'Office'. So I hold down relevant button on my headset and S Voice opens up and listens to me. I say 'call office' and S Voice recognises that I say 'call office' yet does not recognise that I have a contact called office. So I try to call my wife who's name is Karin. I say call Karin and S-Voice tells me I have no contact called Karen in my contacts book. The only way I could get it to work was to rename my wife in the contact book from her real name, Karin to Karen, just so S Voice would let me call her. So I try some of the other contacts I need to call when in the car. I try Kemal - no joy. I try Seran - no joy. I try my own name Erol and say call Erol at home, to try and call my home landline number - no joy. The only contact I could get it to work with was my wife and then only by changing her name in my contacts list. I played with every setting for S-Voice I could and still no better. I tried using google voice search , even though I could not activate that from the headset. Still no joy.

Eventually I give up and go the 'play' market and search for a third party app. I can not find any free ones that seem to do what I want and in the end go for a paid one called Voice Speed Dial. Google play site tells me this £1.91 So I enter my UK CC details and then it tells me it is $2.99 which after the foreign currency charge by my CC company and the terrible exchange rate they give is gods knows how much. Anyway I get my app and it works.

I do understand the difference between using voice tags and natural language parsing and I do see how much more advanced S Voice is in theory and some degree in practice, but really to have to pay extra for an app to get something so fundamentaly basic as working voice dialing on a phone that cost £500 does irk somewhat.

Like I say I am very new to this whole smart phone experience and maybe I have just missed something plainly obvious that would have given me working voice dialing on my phone without having to shell out extra on a third party app and if I have I would welcome someone putting me right. Surely there must be a way in S Voice of recording voice recognition tags for contacts in your contact book so that it can actualy understand who you are trying to call without the need for extra apps ?

Sorry for the rant, but this experience has taken the shine off what has otherwise been a pretty pleasurable experince of owning an S3 (other than its actual price which was painful for me)

Edited July 4, 2012 by erolz

[Guest xeroxide]

i noticed this as an issue if the stored phone number is not stored as "mobile" or "home"

if it has something like an "other" tag, it has issues trying to call via voice.