Following our initial news story, I was interested to see that voice recognition utility Dictate has persevered and evolved, with version 2.1 now allowing a wider range of actions, more languages, and also free input into any text field on your phone. To be honest, the application is still more a novelty than a real aid, but full marks to the developer for confidence in his concept. And it's not as if Symbian has any of its own voice recognition facilities...

Here's Dictate 2.1 in action:

Yes, you have to keep tapping, with your finger, on the proximity sensor, for this new functionality! Don't worry, I test it below...; (right) the Dictate start screen. A bit Siri-ish, with added animated snow - very festive, if gimmicky!

The range of voice commands that work is somewhat limited and (right) there's little intelligence once you get past the basic recognition. For example, you can ask Dictate about the weather, but you just get passed to the mobile accuweather site with no location pre-set.

The formatting of commands has to be incredibly precise. After three attempts, the command (left) was recognised properly, followed by Dictate saying "Which day?". Umm... I included 'today' in the command... ; (right) basic text is fine, but Dictate struggles with names. 'youin a' was supposed to be 'Ewan'! And yes, he's in my Contacts....

Freeform input in generic text fields worked acceptably, with just a few mistakes, though the whole idea of having to keep tapping the sensor while talking is messy. Right, some of the many settings in Dictate.

You can grab the 7 day demo here in the Nokia Store, with an in-app purchase available to carry on after that. Comments welcome - is this ready for the prime time yet? Will it ever be?