How to: use Google Mobile to replace a dozen other applications

[slitchfield]

It's all very well having huge screens, tens of thousands of applications and even virtual and physical qwerty keyboards, but there's plenty you can do without typing a single character using Google's humble new Mobile App, using voice recognition on a vanilla, cheap S60 3rd Edition phone. Here are a few ideas - you might be very surprised!

Read on in the full article.

if only you could use voice search in the google maps app for s60..

[Captain Jon]

I uninstalled this app after barely a day. Voice recognition is good for common words, but that's about it. Most of the time it was quicker for me to use my keypad to type than saying it out loud only for it to fail.

Apart from gmail, my mobile is mostly google free. I would like to keep it that way.

[BtG]

Utterly hopeless application. Deleted it immediately after it couldn't recognise anything I said (and no, I don't have any heavy accent whatsoever). It also creates an ugly icon on the homescreen and I don't like the bit in the T&Cs where it says they can do what the hell they want with your speech and location data and you will be contacted by 3rd parties. No thank you.

[slitchfield]

Interesting. I've found recognition to be pretty good. The trick is NOT to stop and clearly enunciate each word (as you'd expect) but to speak in normal flowing text.

Not too fast or with an accent, of course, but .... well, anyway, it's been working pretty impressively for me.

[Williamoni]

Thanks Steve - useful app.

I think Captain Jon is right about the voice recognition though. I found it to be fairly hit and miss. Try getting the app to recognise the word 'brown'. I gave up in the end. Coolness factor is therefore diminished. 'Hey guys look at this app translating the word 'brown' into French.' Eighteen attempts later and your friends are wondering why you didn't just type it in.

Overall, worth having I would say. Certainly 'weather' and 'taxi' worked for me, and also, vitally, cube root of five.

funny, i ask time for my local location and it gave me UK time!

i ask for weather, it says 'service not available'...

[jrmt]

> auto-change the 'centigrade' to the more American 'celsius'

It's not more American (hint: they use Fahrenheit). It's just more correct. All that centigrade means is "divided into 100", so pretty much any metric unit is "centigrade". Celsius means it's specific to temperature. Of course, the average Joe doesn't understand the difference, but centigrade should be phased out as inaccurate.

[neilhoskins]

My own findings are pretty much like Steve's: I'm extremely impressed. Every time I start thinking that technology has nothing left to impress me with, something like this comes along and amazes me.

I've found the app pretty good on recognition, maybe its an accent thing?! ;-)
Can you get this app (or indeed any other app for that matter) to auto-start in 3rd edition FP2?
Thanks, Jamoi