Dictate an SMS in 2009

Nuance, the leaders in mobile-phone voice recognition, has announced a new version of their feature-phone software which could potentially enable dictation in SMS, instant messaging and e-mail applications.

Nuance Voice Control 2.0 wraps together a bunch of familiar features, like voice dialing, application launching and Web searching, but adds a flexible programming interface so Nuance can voice-enable any application on a phone. Nuance has already partnered with Oz and Seven, major providers of cell-phone IM and e-mail software, to see how they can work together.

Nuance's existing VSuite product has pretty impressive powers. On existing phones such as Sprint's Samsung Instinct and T-Mobile's Samsung Behold, you can not only dial by name, but you can request playlists and launch applications by voice. You can tell your phone to start an SMS message to a certain person. But once you've started the message, you have to type it in.

Way back in 2005, Nuance predecessor VoiceSignal added dictation to phones with VoiceMode, which appeared on few phones in the US. VoiceMode was a handset-based application with limited power. Since then, Nuance has switched to a server-based model for voice recognition. Its software grabs your voice, turns it into data, uploads it to Nuance's servers, and then gets back a text response which it drops into one of your phone's applications.

Phones with the new dictation abilities are expected to appear in the US market within 6-9 months.

• Tweet
• Share
• Share
• Share
• Share