Now that’s what I’m talking about
Google released Voice Actions for Android in the US over a year ago. After field-testing it with Americans for that time, the search giant is now confident enough to introduce it to the biggest European countries: UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain.
Voice Actions is an extension of the voice search capability Android phones have had for some time. Previously, if you pressed the little microphone icon on the right of your Google search widget, you could use voice, rather than text, to conduct the search. That was pretty handy, although its inability to distinguish HEXUS from Texas proved annoying.
Now you can use voice to do a lot more than just search Google. As the video below demonstrates you can now use voice to start phone calls, send text messages, get directions to a location, etc.
To be honest, voice recognition remains as hit-and-miss as it has been for some time. While some words don't seem to be recognised no matter how carefully you enunciate the word, others surprisingly do. The problem remains that a couple of frustrating experiences are often enough for a user to conclude that, clever though the technology it, it's not worth the hassle.
