Developer: Samsung
Price: N/A
App-Aholic Rating: 3.5/5
Ladies and gentlemen, after weeks of waiting, I finally have Verizon’s Samsung Galaxy S3 in my hands. Needless to say, it is gorgeous. So, in honor of Android’s new flagship device, I’ve decided to switch gears a little bit and review Samsung’s answer to Siri, S-Voice.
There’s not too much to voice recognition apps yet. I mean, they can help you navigate through your phone and complete tasks for you, but they aren’t on the HAL 9000 level of artificial intelligence. Although, personally, I would have loved to have S-Voice sound like HAL 9000 (I’m a big 2001: A Space Odyssey fan). We all know that the technology in smartphones is expanding exponentially, so it’s only a matter of time until we have the Samsung Galaxy S6 with HAL 9000 on board.
But I digress. Let’s get back to S-Voice. The app is sleek. It’s very understandable and can pick up most of what you say to it. Although at times it does suffer from robot voice syndrome. It also does not seem as intuitive as Siri, at times stumbling over simple questions and referring you to search on the web for answers. It seems as though when I try to get into a more fulfilling conversation, S-Voice cannot understand what I say.
However, I did get it to say that it liked Siri, so there’s no bad blood between Siri and S-Voice. While it may not be able to hold a conversation yet, S-Voice is great for opening apps, checking the weather, web searching, texting, and making calls. When using it to complete these tasks, S-Voice was flawless. The tasks were completed quickly and without hiccup. If only Samsung can make S-Voice a little bit more intuitive, then it would be comparable to Siri. Until then, one can only dream of having HAL 9000 in the palm of their hand.