By WILSON ROTHMAN
You know that voice-recognition thing on your cell phone that you don't use because it's too complicated and buggy? The one that asks you to record names, and then only auto-dials the names if you say them exactly how you recorded them? Now there's something infinitely better: it's called "speaker-independent" voice recognition, and the best one out by far is from Voice Signal Technologies. You can find it now in three Samsung cell phones from Sprint PCS — the A600 and VGA1000 camera phones, and the new VI660 — and the Samsung i600 Smartphone from Verizon Wireless.
Speaker-independent voice recognition doesn't require any pre-recorded voice tags; you just talk and it understands. Yes, the phone book you've been thumbing through for years — mine has 57 names with a total of 85 numbers — is finally fully voice accessible. You can set the Sprint phones to launch voice command when opened, or get it by holding down the Talk button. With Verizon's Smartphone, it's a program you launch. If you have an earpiece with an answer/hang-up toggle button, you just push the button and you hear the prompt.
Say "Name Dial" aloud, and it asks you for a name. You say something, and it gives you a choice of three names that sound like what you said. Once you've found who you're looking for, it asks which number you want — work, home or mobile — provided they've been entered. Given my 57 options, these phones were, across the board, ridiculously good at locating my requests. Even when I tried different accents, it got the drift. Speaking of accents, the only trouble I had indoors was saying "home." Thanks to my slight Hoosier drawl, I sometimes pronounce "home" with two syllables, and the voice recognition, which relies heavily on syllable-counting, has no clue what "ho-em" is.
Out on the street, with the general din and the occasional horn or siren, the phones definitely had a slightly harder time, but it wasn't a deal-breaker. The secret is timing — once it asks you for something, it beeps. You should speak at that instant. If you're too quick or too slow, the phones get confused, especially with other noise to distract it.
For those who still remember phone numbers, Digit Dial is handy. Unlike Name Dial, the Voice Signal software encourages you to train Digit Dial to your pronunciation (again, because numbers are by-and-large monosyllabic). The funny thing I discovered about Digit Dial is that rather than enunciating numbers slowly and distinctly, you're supposed to recite them in a brisk, conversational way.
Each phone has additional voice-recognition perks worth checking out, and the silly thing is, this million-dollar technology might already be in your phone. Have a look. If not, trade it in, because this stuff is awesome!
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