For all iOS lovers out there, how many of you want to get your hands on the new cool and fun Siri available on the iPhone 4S, but it would be unwise to get a brand new iPhone 4S because you just bought your brand new iPhone 4 a few months ago? Of course you could try to hack it and get Siri on your iPhone 4, but if you are not as tech savvy, you could try out Vlingo – an app which perform simple task on your mobile through voice recognition.
Why did i try out Vlingo? Simple. I wanted to be one of the cool guys to have tried Siri after hearing so much about how fun it is, but I have not had the chance to get my hands on one yet. So I chanced upon Vlingo and decided to download it and give it a try. It was actually one of the top 30 apps on the app store a few days ago.
What Vlingo can do:
- SMS: Text Jacky, message how are you feeling today?
- Email: Email Jacky, Subject Hi Message How are you today?
- Maps: Find Raffles City
- Social Update: Facebook Update today I feel good
- Web Search: Search e27
- Voice Dial: Call Jacky mobile
To improve its accuracy of identification when you speak contact names to call or text, you could grant Vlingo access to your contact for indexing when you install Vlingo. Having tried out the various features that are available, I have to admit that Vlingo was pretty fun. It could basically perform all my voice commands. It could perform my voice dial command, it could update my Facebook status, and it could perform simple emails for me. However, there were a few instances where Vlingo could not understand my voice command, especially when I am using the web search feature.
Having tried Vlingo, to be honest I was a little disappointed with its features. The amount of time that is needed for me to perform a voice command, for Vlingo to then carry out the command, I could have done it faster manually. Other than that, I would also expect Vlingo to be able to perform other tasks such as checking the weather forecast and setting a reminder for me. And it would also be totally awesome if I could set a default voice command to launch Vlingo app as opposed to me launching the app, and then giving it my voice command.
But I guess I should manage my expectation towards Vlingo because after all it is not perfect. The same applies to Siri. Techcrunch recently published an excellent article written by Jordan Crook where he said that the hype on Siri creates a lot of expectations from everyone, and that some people are disappointed when Siri could not perform some tasks such as adding contacts to the phone or launching an app. Expectation is a tricky thing.
“But Apple never said she’d be able to do that. And Siri is still in beta, technically, so there’s a good chance that she’ll be able to do much more in the coming months. But that doesn’t change my disappointment. Siri gave me hope — a feeling that we were truly jumping into the future, where a voice on a mobile computer could help me in almost any way. Not that it’s Siri’s fault, but this just isn’t the case.”
Overall, Vlingo was fun while it lasted. If you, like me, want to try out a voice recognition app and see how it works, you could give Vlingo a shot, but otherwise, grab an iPhone 4S from your friend to try the authentic Siri out. Heard its so much fun with it because of its semantic behavior.
Vlingo is also available on other mobile OS such as Android and WP7.
Link to full article
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