Voice Control was one of the new features I was the most keen to see on the new iPhone 3GS. As I ‘ve mentioned before “ in my Day 1 impressions post about the 3GS “ I find it more than a little disappointing so far.
It ‘s not that it performs badly at what it does. I ‘ve had pretty good results most of the time when using it. There have been times when it has failed to recognize a command I ‘ve given, but they ‘ve been a pretty low percentage, and may well be due to me speaking too quickly or similar.
What disappoints me about Voice Control on the 3GS is that it is so limited in its scope. You can only control two things with it “ making phone calls and music on the iPod app. Sure, there are a good few commands for both the phone and the iPod app, and they ‘re very handy ones to make use of “ but I can ‘t help thinking about how much more it could do.
This is one of those very rare areas where Windows Mobile had a better solution, although admittedly it was not a built-in part of the OS and it was not a free app. Voice Command on WinMo did things like opening applications, letting you review calendar appointments, and interact with your contacts as well. It could even do things like tell you your current remaining battery level, or toggle airplane mode on or off.
All of those things should be do-able via the 3GS ‘ Voice Control. And the other huge miss for me is Spotlight search. Just about everyone I come in contact with lists Spotlight as one of their favorite features of the 3.0 OS, and it would be super cool to be able to kick off searches with the voice control app.
Another huge plus would be if Voice Control could be used to work with some of those frequently needed services settings for the iPhone, that are just not easy enough to access on a non-jailbroken iPhone. I would love to be able to say ‘Turn On 3G ‘ or ‘Turn Off 3G ‘ when desired. Same for Location Services, Bluetooth, and so on.
I really hope that some or all of these features will be added to a future update of Voice Control.
What do you all think of Voice Control so far? What other things would you like to see it be able to control?
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