I recently purchased Choice Dialer, and thought I'd start a thread with somewhat af a review, and hopefully learn from others too about how to make it work well for us.
Ever since moving to Android, I have sorely missed Microsoft Voice Command. Choice Dialer is a start toward that direction. Of course, some will think of Vlingo, which in fact may be better now than when I last used it. Seems there is not one voice app that does everything.
Among features that it has are;
Of course, Dial by name, or number
Play/pause music; Next/Previous song; Play by artist; Play from album; Play songs by title
Send email
Send text
Set Facebook status
Create contact
Open App
Schedule an event on calendar
Enable/Disable WiFi, Blue Tooth, GPS and some more
Tell you the time
Add to calendar
I have only had the app for a few days, and this review will not be comprehensive.
Does it understand?
I am struggleing a bit having it understand me. I frequently have it say "Try again". Sometimes it does something completely different from what I asked.
I am finding that it has a learning curve for speaking so it understands, as it is getting a little better. Interestingly, it understands better if I speak faster. When talking to a voice recognition, I think people have a tendency to speak slow and enunciate clearly. Interestingly, i find that makes it worse...at least, speaking slow does, for me.
I also think the app needs to mature some. For example I had this conversation with it yesterday:
Me: Enable Blue Tooth
CD: Did you say Disable Blue Tooth?
Me: No
CD; Disabling Blue Tooth.
Uh...it should have understood NO.
Another thing, as all voice dialers need, it needs a fairly quite environment. Background noise, radios, etc. will really throw it off.
Playing Music
First off, the only music player it plays through at the moment is the native android music app. I use MixZing, so prefer that.
It is nice that it will play by Artist, Album, or Song. But a glaring omission is it will not play by Genre. I asked them about playing genres, and got this response:
As to your suggestion for genres, for now perhaps you can approximate the effect through playlists? I steer clear of genres, as Android does not support the concept in its data model (I cannot ask the phone to tell me which songs are "pop").
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Dialng
I find it to do fairly well at dialing when the person is in the contacts. Occasionally need to retry. I really like that it has voice confirmation.
Send Email
When I go to dictate an email, it uses Google Voice to hear the message. And often I get "Server problem Speak again" message in the Google App. I suppose it is a problem for the Google App, not Choice Dialer. But in the end, not too great. I attempted an email 7 times, and it worked twice. When it works, there is no way that I know of to have it use punctuation.
Open App
I can say Open <program name> and it works fairly well.
An interesting challenge for it is this one: "Open GPS Test". It never gets that. I presume because GPS is not a word.
Enable/Disable Functions
It works pretty good to enable Blue Tooth, and WiFi. Again, I sometimes need to repeat.
But, interestingly, enabling GPS is not what you expect. It launches the settings for you to click it, rather than just turning it on. I contacted them about it, and this is their response:
That is because that is all it CAN do.. nothing more direct is permitted a non-Google app.
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Click to collapse
That one perplexes me. If you can directly enable Wifi, and Blue Tooth, I wonder why you couldn't do GPS. Certainly, there are apps that you can toggle it with.
Support
I find them VERY responsive. This is a good sign, and hopefully the app will mature and improve.
Wish List
If only this, or some app somewhere, could be as solid and capable as I found Microsoft Voice Command to be.
Would like to be able to : Play music by genre; Of course, have improved understanding and accuracy; tell me what is on my schedule today, and tomorrow. I'm sure there are others, but I'm running out of time for now on this post.
Conclusion
I may continue to use this for basic stuff, including dialing, and turning on BT when in car, opening apps etc. But for now, its too much effort repeating and so forth for the other features to be of much value to me.
So, are you using Choice Dialer? Better luck with it? Suggestions for use?
ewingr said:
I recently purchased Choice Dialer, and thought I'd start a thread with somewhat af a review, and hopefully learn from others too about how to make it work well for us.
...
Conclusion
I may continue to use this for basic stuff, including dialing, and turning on BT when in car, opening apps etc. But for now, its too much effort repeating and so forth for the other features to be of much value to me.
So, are you using Choice Dialer? Better luck with it? Suggestions for use?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tried the free version and really found it to be barely on par with the VoiceDailer.apk. Additionally, though there were lots of settings, it seemed overly complicated to me (I am a huge Voicedial fan from MS6.5).
I really only want the dial bit with confirmation (I never got that to work with the free version), and maybe reading/sending texts via voice.
I am not ready to step up and buy the app, and a 1 day trial is sort of silly. Give me 3-4 days. I did not realized there was a 1 day trial when I got the free version from the market, so I did not have an opportunity to test the paid version.
It is good to hear that their support is responsive. Let me know how you progress with this. I will let you know if I purchase the product.
I'll post back in a while.
I am still finding it a bit frustrating. I love the confirmation. But, I find it has a LOT of trouble understanding me. I think it is due to background noise.
Last night I tried it a bit driving home. I drive a Lexus, so road noise is not that bad, but with my Motorola T505 speaker phone unit, I had to scream at it for it to hear me.
Well, I'm about to give up on Choice Dialer. It just has way too high a percentage of not understanding.
I'm very disappointed. This is the only app I've found that has verification by voice.
I find Vlingo and Google Voice to have its share of misunderstanding, but not near as bad as Choice Dialer, but then they require hands on methods for verifications.
The major omission I found when switching from Windows Mobile to Android Eclair was voice dialling thru bluetooth. When I updated to Froyo I immediately tested the Voice Dialler with my Jawbone II - disappointed is an understatement. Recognition of contact names was abysmal, half the time it would dial the wrong contact without any confirmation. Other times I'd have to select an option on the screen - hardly hands free!
I tried Vlingo, but soon found it would only listen and speak thru the phone, not the bluetooth. Apparently a headset with A2DP profile is required.
So I tried Choice Dialer free, and found it better than the stock voice dialer because it offers voice confirmations thru bluetooth. That alone makes it worth using.
Recognition is good using the Jawbone, I haven't tried a built-in bluetooth or separate speaker phone yet. I'll report back when I've done so.
Anyway, I was impressed enough to purchase the Choice Dialer Plus. Can't say I've used the text and email capabilites for real yet, because although you can dictate a message thru bluetooth, you can't send it without pressing a button on the screen. Apparently the developer is working on making texting fully hands-free. He seems pretty active, judging by the change log on the site.
So I would recommend that those who are disappointed with stock Voice Dialler give Choice Dialer a try and see how the voice recognition works for you. Or if you have an A2DP headset, try Vlingo.
hey there,
i'm looking for a quality call filter application which has a white list and profiles (time/day related blocking) and actually works.
i'm running cm7 and haven't found a good one yet, call filter, afirewall, extreme call blocker droid, those are the ones i tested recently.
what i'd prefer too, is to get the application from a trusted dev, w/o handing over gps location data to some devs in asia.
if the filter has easy adding for contact groups it would be perfect.
have you guys discovered something that fits my needs?
thanks for taking the time to help me, i appreciate it!
B
Yep, the two best ones are made by the same company:
Root Call Blocker (for general use):
https://market.android.com/details?id=fahrbot.apps.rootcallblocker.beta
Call Master (for advanced users):
https://market.android.com/details?id=fahrbot.apps.blacklist
These are the only blockers that completely block everything without turning the screen on. Need to be rooted though.
:0 never heard of those two applications. seems the dev is quite an exzentrik person.
Well what I basically want to do is to make my phone say "out of network" or "User busy on another call" when someone specific calls me. There are plenty of apps out there on play-store to blacklist calls but what they basically do is that they cut the call with the caller listening a minor ring, means he comes to know that his calls is intentionally being ignored.. I also know there is trick of removing battery while phone is on but in this way I can loose my other important calls..!! I've come across an app in Intex Aqua series of mobiles named "Firewall". This app does what I want to do but when I tried to install this app on my Xperia SP it doesn't get installed might be there are proprietary restrictions. So does anybody knows a trick how to port that app for Xperia or could do this then it will be of great help.. Thanks
I used an app named advanced call manager on my previous Xperia Ray. In that you can block any number with reply to the caller like dialed number does not exist or out of coverage area etc.
Not sure if that app is still available for JB androids.
Here is the app about which I was talking. Please somebody here could port this app to make run on Xperia SP...!!!
Hello,
I have a oneplu3 that isn't rooted and with the latest version of the OS. Lately, when I try to clear background apps, I have seen in few instances of an app/phone keypad(if I may call) that looks as if there is an ongoing call running in the background (without any number). Why am I seeing this? what is it? I am not sure. But something that I know, is that there shouldn't be an ongoing call in my background when I am not on a call. I have tried to pay attention to see if there is a number that it is calling too but I do not see any number ( looks like ongoing, because I see a red phone below the phone keypad). I am not sure what app is causing this or if this is related to the actual OS, but I can't seem to replicate it to get a screen cap. Whats app, Reddit, clover, Google assistant are the only apps that I frequently use.
I know that this in't related to phone/call app as it would show my call log when I clear the tasks.
I have an ESET suite on my phone.
Am I being paranoid for no reason? is there something that I can do to figure out what is going on?
Thanks for your time.
So, I found the setting that reads to me who is calling.
So, for instance if Jesse Pinkman calls me, my phone will say "Jesse Pinkman" and then ring.
If it is not in my contact list, it will read the number.
But it only does it once.
I remember on some of my older phones, it would actually say who was calling, you would get the ring, say who was calling, get the ring, and repeat until VM picks up or I pick up.
I am looking for a way to do this again. If not available, is there an APP that will do this?
The reason I am doing this is because I have bluetooth on my helmet, and when I am riding I only want to pick up for certain callers.
On my phone, it is found under
Settings >> Accessibility>> Screen Reader>> Settings >>Read caller ID aloud
I simply did a search for "aloud" in Settings.
For anyone still looking for an answer: Samsung has made it difficult (on Oreo) to enable the function without the accessibility settings that call out every action you do. It has been integrated well in Pie under call settings. However, if you don't like Pie, like me, there's only one app that I found to actually do it very well. Its called Who's Calling. Get it from PlayStore. I have tested more than 20 apps and nothing does it better. I haven't even seen a single ad from it. Hope this saves someone time.
Cheers