Petr Šourek I confess that the iPhone 4S has no added value for me personally. But if Siri was in our native language, I probably wouldn't hesitate to buy it right after launch. For now, I waited and waited to see if a more acceptable solution could be found, because the iPhone 4 is fully sufficient for me.
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I haven't tried any voice assistants so far because they all require Jailbreak, which unfortunately isn't as cool as it was back in the iPhone 3G/3GS. However, I got my hands on an application from the company Nuance Communications, which explicitly mentioned trying it out.
This venture consists of two separate applications – Dragon Quest is designed to translate your voice into search services such as Google/Yahoo, Twitter, Youtube, etc. Dragon Dictation works like a secretary - you dictate something to her, she translates it into text that you can edit and either send by email, SMS, or you can put it anywhere via the mailbox.
Both applications speak Czech and, like Siri, communicate with their own server for speech recognition. The data is translated from voice to text, which is then sent back to the user. Communication uses a protocol for secure data transfer. While mentioning the use of the server as the main point of using the application, I must point out that in the few days that I tested the application, there was almost no communication problem, whether I was on Wi-Fi or 3G network. Maybe there could be a problem when communicating via Edge/GPRS, but I didn't have a chance to test that.
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The main GUI of both apps is austerely designed, but serves its purpose. Due to Apple's restrictions, don't expect integration with internal search. At the first launch, you must agree to the license agreement, which deals with sending dictated information to the server, or when dictating, the application will ask you if it can download your contacts, which it then uses to recognize names during dictation. Another stipulation is linked to this, which points out that only names are sent to the server, not phone numbers, e-mails and the like.
Directly in the application, you will only see a big button with a red dot that says: press to record, or the Search application will show the history of previous searches. Subsequently, in the lower left corner, we find the settings button, where you can set whether the application should recognize the end of speech, or the recognition language, and so on.
The recognition itself is at a relatively good level. Why relatively? Because there are things they translate correctly and there are things they translate completely differently. But don't if it's a foreign expression. I think the screenshots attached below describe the situation very well. If the text is translated incorrectly, the same one is written below it, albeit without diacritics, but it is the correct one that I dictated. The most interesting is probably the text that was read from this link, this is about recording a recipe. It's not exactly poorly read, but I don't know if I would be able to use this text later without any problems.
What bothered me about the Dictation application was that if I dictated text and didn't send it for translation, I couldn't go back to it, I had a problem and I was never able to retrieve the text.
This is my experience gained from using this app for two days. I can say that although the application sometimes has problems in voice recognition, I think that it will be fully usable in time, anyway, I would prefer to confirm or deny this conclusion after about a month of use. In the future, I would be interested in how the application will fare, especially in competition with Siri. Unfortunately, Dragon Dictation has a lot of obstacles on its way to overcome. It's not fully integrated into iOS, but maybe Apple will allow it in time.
[button color=red link=http://itunes.apple.com/cz/app/dragon-dictation/id341446764?mt=8 target=““]Dragon Dictation – Free[/button][button color=red link= http://itunes.apple.com/cz/app/dragon-search/id341452950?mt=8 target=”“]Dragon Search – Free[/button]
Editor's note:
According to Nuance Communications, apps adapt to their user. The more often he uses them, the more accurate the recognition. Likewise, language models are often updated to better recognize a given speech.
"Perhaps there could be an issue with Edge/GPRS communication, but I haven't had a chance to test that."
Is it possible to turn off 3G on the iPhone? ;)
Unfortunately, not on the 4S anymore, as far as I know...
since iOS 5.1. can turn off 3G
I'm definitely very sorry that Dragon search is iPhone only. (theoretically it also works on the iPad, but it is not optimized for it) At the same time, Dragon dictation is available on both the iPhone and the iPad.
I got it on my iPad. my iphone and ipad account are the same. I installed it from pto iphon section!! I really don't know how I did it. I DON'T HAVE JB!!!
An iPad version is normally available
Hello, how did you achieve the (automatic) correction of the text, see "To reduce I would have...." / "For breakfast I would have...."? Thanks for your answer.
Somehow it doesn't seem to me that dicktation, or his servers learned from previous failures. If I include the time for corrections, it is faster to write the entire text than to dictate and correct. Reading the same text several times will produce different results each time and cannot be said to convert to correctness.
What are you writing here??? That app is completely UNUSABLE, check the appstore, it doesn't recognize speech at all!!
You probably haven't tried it enough. It really matters where to talk on the phone (see my post above). Works better than expected for me
I doubt that Apple integrates this application into its system? Why like? Siri is much better (if only it were in Czech) and in addition, Apple has full control over its development
he can integrate it, for example, by buying the entire company and using their development in his codes for Siri
I have been testing the application since this morning. It works pretty well for me. I even tried dictating a piece of a business contract - just a few little things, otherwise everything was OK. I tried dictating a work letter and forwarding it by email. On the computer, Word fixed the "typos". Enthusiasm for me.
It works very well. According to my findings, where to talk on the phone is important. I recommend the upper part - it's weird, but it makes a big difference (at least from what I've found).
please, do you have any idea if there is a utility in cydia for entering text directly into the destination?
Ex. I open an email, I give a reply, I tap the place where I want to dictate the text, a bar appears with the option of selecting, copying, etc., there is also dragon, I click, switch to the application, dictate, and after copying the text to the clipboard, it appears automatically on specified place in the mail. This way it could work pretty much anywhere you can paste text.
Well, I'm curious about the Czech Siri. This is pretty cool, but I can't see it for daily use
Well, this application didn't really excite me, it doesn't understand me much and anyway it doesn't do much for me unlike Siri. Siri in CZ would be great, but for me, again, only on the condition that it understands two languages at the same time. I am currently more satisfied with Siri and it should be noted that when Siri was released in Japanese, she understood my Japanese much better than Dragon Czech...