Sean D. Francis

Android App of the Week: Voice Search

Posted on 08 September 2010

I downloaded Voice Search the moment I heard about it on This Week in Google and it integrated so smoothly in how I use my phone that I instantly forgot that it was an app and not an essential part of the Android 2.2 operating system.

Welcome to the future as we always imagined it, sort of.  Remember on Star Trek: The Next Generation when Jean-Luc Picard would start his sentence with “Computer’ and then give the ship’s computer a task to complete?  And the computer did it.  Voice Search enables that. Voice Search is like having the Enterprises’s computer on your cellphone! Okay, technically not a computer as powerful as the Enterprises’s and sadly without Majel Barrett’s voice confirming the commands.  No reason to oversell this amazing app.

Press and hold the search button on your phone, wait and a box pops up asking you to speak your command.

“Note to self: Remember to pick up a pot roast at the store.”  The droid shoots you an email with the reminder.  “Navigate to 444 Front Street” The Android launches the Navigation and starts telling you how to get where you want to go. “Listen to B52s’ and if you have the B52s on your device, then it will start playing.  How about calling up websites?  Using smartphones to browse websites is kind of annoying when trying to type in long URLs.  With Voice Search just say ‘Go to Lifehacker’ and the browser launches to that website.

Voice Search is the missing element that belongs on every Android phone. It allows hands free calling, hands free text messaging, hands free emails.  Okay, technically hands free, the search button still has to be pressed first.  No reason to oversell this amazing app.  This app integrates seamlessly with the operation of the Android phone.