The world is no more ruled by humans, but humans are now ruled by Androids. Android phones have taken people’s fancies and it has made people cool and hip. However, what really makes a phone ‘in’ is voice controls. Speaking to one’s phone and making it do stuff is the thing of the day. Voice control in Android kicks in to do little things that you would want to do when your hands are occupied. You will have to remember one thing though. Android does not recognize normal talk meaning you will have to specify the task with the required command to ensure that your phone understands what you want it to do. Android might not be super awesome with the voice commands but you can get your job done if you know the right things to say.
1. Calling
The most common thing that you would be doing with your phone is calling. So to make a call, just say Call . For example, you could say, Call Rick Work and your phone would immediately call him for you. If your phone is not sure as to which contact it is, it would ask you for a confirmation. This ensures that you do not call someone else by mistake. There is another thing that your phone does. If you want to call a business then just say Call.. Name of Business . Your phone would immediately take the number from the internet and call the business for you.
2. Sending a text message and email
The next thing is to send a text message. Just say Send text message to.. Contact name.. Message . The best thing is, the text is shown to you before getting sent. You can therefore, make edits and changes if you wish to.
Sending an email is very similar to sending a text message. Send email to.. Contact Name.. Message. If you wish to add more content to your email you can just speak and it will get added.
If you want to send yourself a reminder just say Note to self.. message . You will get an email to yourself with this.
3. Going to a website, listening to music
If you want to open a website then say Go to.. Name of website. The website will be immediately opened in your default browser. You can also use Open.. Name of website. Within the browser you can just speak and your browser will do the searching for you.
One of the most commonly used applications is Music. But this is not too good with voice. If you say Listen to.. Song name/artist/album your phone would use a default application to open this. More often than not it is Youtube. Remember that you will need the right music app for this otherwise this can get a little frustrating.
There is another thing that your voice command can help you with. If you are searching for a definition to a word then you can just say Define.. word and your phone will come up with a list of words and pick the one that you wanted.
4. Navigating
The voice search is a big help when you are driving. If you want to know the directions to some place and want your phone to navigate you then say Navigate to.. Name of place and your phone would automatically open navigation and drive you through virtually. If you want to see the map of a place then say Map of.. Name of place.
5. Settings and Tweaks
Now that you have learnt the commands, you have to do certain things before you can use voice commands. Install the app Voice Search from the android market. Once you have gotten this installed you can change some settings in your system. Go to the Voice input settings on your phone’s system settings and choose what is required. Android has a Personalized recognition setting wherein, your phone learns to identify words and speech with time. This makes your voice search more customized than ever.
There is also an issue with privacy. In your voice settings you will find a Google Dashboard. This is the place where all your Google data is stored, emails, social networking accounts and your voice commands. Yes, Google has all your voice commands which it uses to improve accuracy of the voice search feature. You can of course choose to delete all the voice data if your fear a privacy invasion, but rest assured Google will not use your private data namely your voice to create a fake ‘you’. If you delete the data, then your voice commands might get less accurate.