The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple - Oscar Wilde
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Microsoft gives Windows Phone 7 Mango a voice
SMARTPHONE SOFTWARE DEVELOPER Microsoft has shown off voice-to-text capabilities that will be available in its Windows Phone 7 (WP7) Mango update.
Microsoft's WP7 Mango update is set to bring a number of features and over the course of this year the firm has been trickling out information about the update that it hopes will turn WP7's fortunes around. This time Microsoft chose to show off voice-to-text features that will mean WP7 handsets will not only be able to read out text messages but also accept voice commands and transcription.
According to Microsoft's Alex Perez Avila, a member of the firm's Tellme team that develops voice recognition, the speech recognition capabilities of WP7 Mango are down to the firm's Tellme cloud rather than the handset itself. Given that the computation required for accurate voice recognition is non-trivial, it is understandable to offload processing to the cloud rather than eat up battery life. However this suggests that the service will only work when there is an adequate data connection.
Microsoft said that, aside from being able to read and take dictation of text messages, WP7 Mango will have new speech related accessibility features such as voice commands to forward calls and the ability to set up a speed-dial list. That said, back in 2000 there were phones that allowed users to attach voice identification to a particular contact allowing for voice dialing.
Microsoft claims that users will be also able to search Bing, navigate its maps service, start an application during a call and turn the speakerphone on, all through the power of voice.
Microsoft has already released Mango to device manufacturers, however there's no timeframe for when the device manufacturers and operators will push it out to WP7 users. Microsoft has said that all WP7 devices will eventually receive the Mango update, but as history has shown with Android, while all the animals might be equal, some are more equal than others.
Release dates aside, it is clear that Microsoft is trying very hard to implement features that it believes will set WP7 apart from Google's Android and Apple's IOS. Whether that will be enough to boost sales is another question, especially since the world is waiting to see what Apple does with IOS 5. µ
Tags: Microsoft
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What the fauk?
Are you serious, android has some lame speech recognition.
What's the point of a voice dialer that expects you to confirm the command on screen? Try to open your voice dialer and say open a.p.n.s., its stupid. Since windows mobile 5 YOU HAVE BEEN ABLE TO OPEN PROGRAMS, DIAL NUMBERS, WRITE TXT MESSAGES, AND CONTROL MUSIC "PLAY TEGO CALDERON" FOR EXAMPLE! Then with android and ios is seems like somethings are going back to the stone age. It took apple a long time to get wallpapers, and now android fauked them up now in 2.x with the side scroling bullshet. Who the hell needs more than one homescreen/desktop? I always turn them off, even in pc. Its about time we get a good old fashion os, one that has everything you need native, not sending all the bs to google, or fake multi tasking.
@Differentiating feature?
"Microsoft are fond of announcing features that others (or often Microsoft themselves) have had for ages."
Please watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmsSk4bYNao
Anonymouse
I checked out that Story and just as I suspected it's an app that allows google voice search. WP7 voice capabilities are baked into the OS which makes it a much better feature. Holding down the Home button brings up the voice capabilities with ease.
This is a strange news post. Seeing as my Windows Phone 7 has had the ability to search, launch apps and call contacts via voice commands since I bought it last year. If Microsoft is expanding these capabilities, that's great. But you shouldn't be reporting it as if it can't already do simple things like call your contacts.
"...it is clear that Microsoft is trying very hard to implement features that it believes will set WP7 apart from Google's Android and Apple's IOS"
Actually Android has had voice search, text message entry, etc, for at least a year. Probably iOS too. Check out this Inquirer story from August 2010: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/review/1727968/we-test-drive-google-voice-search
Microsoft are fond of announcing features that others (or often Microsoft themselves) have had for ages.
"...it is clear that Microsoft is trying very hard to implement features that it believes will set WP7 apart from Google's Android and Apple's IOS"
Actually Android have had voice search, text entry, etc, for at least a year. Probably iOS too. Check out this Inquirer story from August 2010: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/review/1727968/we-test-drive-google-voice-search
Microsoft are fond of announcing features that others (or often Microsoft themselves) have had for ages.