
Google Unveils Awesomely Fast And Accurate Voice Actions For Android - edw519
http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/12/google-voice-actions/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo
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Harj
i switched to a nexus one/android recently for a few weeks. the experience
made me really appreciate the importance of the intangibles involved in
hardware design.

if i had to break down the iphone and nexus/android into a comparison of
features the latter would have dominated for me. the native gmail search,
beautiful google voice integration (i make a lot of international calls home
which are super cheap on Goog Voice), turn by turn car navigation, reliable
and good voice recognition, instant set up via my google account - each of
those individually is a killer feature for me. these new voice actions again
sound killer.

yet i still found myself yearning for my iphone and i eventually made the
switch back. not because there was any one feature i desperately missed but
because the overall experience of using it just felt so good. scrolling was
flawless. the touchscreen always accurate. switching between apps incredibly
smooth. all of these little things added up to a whole greater than sum of its
parts (features).

you have to presume google spent a long time testing and developing the nexus
and android yet it still lags behind the iphone on the intangibles. clearly
getting these things right must be a non-trivial process and i'd come to take
them for granted after becoming accustomed to the iphone. i won't make that
mistake again.

~~~
elblanco
I guess it all comes down to "what do you want to do?" Do you want to be able
to do "stuff" with your phone -- anything?

Or do you want to look/feel good while doing some smaller subset of "stuff"?

Ultimately, when improving things, you hit the law of diminishing returns. You
can spend twice as much effort making something 5% better than you did getting
it to a 90% solution. It's like stereo equipment. A pretty ok system is like
$200-300. One that's 10% better is $2000. 5% better than that and it's
$20,000. And yeah, most people will agree that the $20,000 system sounds
better, even non-audiophiles.

I don't think the Android UI will ever be as _good_ as Apple's. Nobody is. But
"good enough" is a reasonable target. Google can either expend the energy
polishing the hell out of minor interface quibbles, or they can expand the
universe of the things they can do. A device that can do one thing, awesomely,
is simply not as attractive as a device that can do 100 things at the 90%
"good enough" level.

~~~
Timothee
_I guess it all comes down to "what do you want to do?" Do you want to be able
to do "stuff" with your phone -- anything?_

 _Or do you want to look/feel good while doing some smaller subset of
"stuff"?_

 _A device that can do one thing, awesomely, is simply not as attractive as a
device that can do 100 things at the 90% "good enough" level._

Are you comparing it to the iPhone here? Yes, the iPhone has some limitations
but it's nowhere near your 100:1 ratio. Actually, there isn't that many
limitations honestly. No you don't have turn-by-turn navigation out of the
box, but it's available. MobileMe is supposed to offer some of the integration
with a Google account.

Sure, you have things like plugging to iTunes, and limitations due to the App
Store, but your comment sounds like "an iPhone is pretty and works very well
but is very limited, while an Android phone is not as polished but the sky is
the limit in terms of what can be done with it". It's simply not true.

Also, regarding "look/feel good", it sounds like you feel that the iPhone is
still a status symbol. I think the iPhone is past being a fashion accessory
that make people turn around.

edit: one can argue that you're trading some freedom for some polish. Basing
your argument on what the various phones can do and can not do doesn't work
for me.

~~~
elblanco
> Are you comparing it to the iPhone here? Yes, the iPhone has some
> limitations but it's nowhere near your 100:1 ratio.

Don't get too hung up on the ratio.

> Actually, there isn't that many limitations honestly.

 _Followed by a list of limitations and caveats._

Actually, I'd argue the opposite, the iPhone _can_ currently do many things
that an Android can't do...things that I'd really like to do, like play
Katamari Damacy (lest you think I'm trivializing, I have a serious soft spot
for that game)...I think it's not hard to make a compelling case that in terms
of software availability _and_ general quality, the iPhone trumps the Android
hands down at present.

However, I think that it's also easy to argue a few other related points, the
Android phones are simply shipping with a better out-of-the-box user
experience in terms of capability. Sure one can purchase a variety of add ons
and pay for some subscription services and eventually bring the two phones to
parity at a cost. But that doesn't exactly disagree with that point then does
it?

And while there are certainly more apps in the iPhone store at present, the
Android Market really is the domain of hobbyists more so than the iPhone app
store. This is good and bad, in the Android marketplace, I think it's possible
to find more hobbyist style apps at $0 that provide pretty good add-on
functionality for the phone for no cost whatsoever. Like the tri-corder app
which really is quite cool and has no equivalent on the iPhone. The difference
between market opportunity and buyer habit between the two stores is often
brought up here on HN. I think the Android platform draws its strength from
this in many ways.

However, it has a downside in that the equivalent apps on the iPhone, ones
that you have to pay some nominal fee for, really do _tend_ to be of a higher
production quality than the Android. And that's normal, professional paid
software just tends to be of a higher production quality than hobbyist derived
software. Perhaps in there's not much difference in functionality, but if I
make money on my iPhone apps, I can afford to hire a graphic artist instead of
using much maligned "developer art".

>Also, regarding "look/feel good", it sounds like you feel that the iPhone is
still a status symbol.

Not at all, I'm simply saying exactly what I'm saying.

If you'll allow me to make a very labored analogy: A Honda Civic and a Mini
Cooper (bear with me, I'm trying to use functionally equivalent cars) perform
about the same, but you'll look better in the Mini. However, the backseats in
the Mini kind of suck, so I can't really use it for four adults as well as a
Civic, and because it looks nicer I probably don't want to load a bunch of
mulch or yard equipment in the trunk of my Mini. And the operating costs of
the Mini are higher than a Civic, it's less reliable, harder to find qualified
technicians, has more specific fuel requirements, more expensive to do body
work on and takes longer to find parts, whatever etc.

 _But_ (and this is a big but for all the Mini owners of the world) you'll
look better while sitting in traffic and the key fob is really cool. The Mini
is no more a status symbol than the Civic is in the same way an iPhone is no
more a status symbol than an Android phone is. You just get what you want and
that's that.

The relative capabilities of the two platforms in terms of software
availability is the one area the comparison of iPhone:Android::Mac:Windows
falls down. There simply is more and better software available for the iPhone,
it's just that it doesn't ship on the device. The stuff that ships with an
Android phone simply makes it a more capable phone from the time it's first
powered on. And in some cases, there simply isn't an equivalent functionality
available for the iPhone (and likely isn't going to be one due to Apple's
strategic policies).

------
hyperbovine
This is awesome. Nobody will use it. People feel stupid talking to computers.
Remember how you embarrassed you felt the last time you were forced to bark at
one of those computerized phone operators in a public place? That's this, only
all the time.

Would you not feel like the biggest doofus in the world whipping out your
Droid 2 and performing "note to self [note]" in front of people?

~~~
cryptoz
You are being shortsighted and silly. Here are some excellent examples to show
you that speech technology could be pretty damn amazing! The first one
<strike>could</strike> _will_ save lives.

(While driving) "Should I turn left or right at this intersection?"

(While shopping, examining a carton of eggs) "Were these eggs cheaper at the
corner store?"

(While coding) "Any meetings soon?"

..... Do I need to continue? The applications are endless, assuming _it
actually works_. People have felt stupid in the past because the conversation
would go like this: "note to self"....."I said, NOTE TO SELF not NOTICE ELF
you fucking idiot machine!"

The point is...if Google can do it well, it will take off.

~~~
ThomPete
Shortsighted perhaps but I don't think he is silly.

The problem is about trust. Do I trust the system to give me proper feedback.
What if I am yelling because I am stressed, what if it's noisy etc. What if we
are two people right next to each other.

Abd then there are quite a few mental reasons why voice recognition isn't just
going to be a consumer reality, even if/when the technology is there.

~~~
cryptoz
I clearly stated that speech technology would only take off if it works. If
you don't trust it, or it can't handle you yelling, _then it doesn't work and
I agree that it won't take off_.

I'm curious about the "mental reasons" you hint at. What are those reasons? Do
you mean something like Uncanny Valley? Or something else entirely?

~~~
cracki
you can expect a person to ask if something is unclear. no speech recog system
has done that yet.

speech recog is orders of magnitude behind humans in accuracy.

 _understanding_ is another thing entirely. i don't mean philosophy but the
problem of even parsing a sentence. just look at implementations of automatic
language translation to get a feeling for this problem.

speech recog has a long way to go because AI has a long way to go.

you don't get human-like machine interaction out of bare speech recog.

------
delackner
Speech recognition has been stuck at a high but not good enough plateau for
some time. 90% accuracy sounds nice, but is actually totally useless. 99%
might be good enough, but no one is there. More likely, 99.9 (for some number
of repeating 9s) might be necessary for people to really trust these systems.

~~~
elblanco
I read someplace that human speech recognition is around 90%, I think for
speech recognition to be considered "useful" it has to be super-human. I agree
something like 99+% is required before it really gets accepted.

One problem lots of speech driven systems have too is the lack of discover-
ability. There's no interface you can inspect to learn from unless the system
gives you a long list of command choices.

------
dschobel
Is the voice recognition better than what google voice offers in its
transcription service? Because I've found that to be horribly inaccurate.

~~~
fudge
The voice recognition better than with google voice ohh for cynics
transctription service because i've found that to be a horriby inaccurate.

(Your question, spoken by a norwegian, transcribed by the new Google Voice
Search)

~~~
bemmu
"is the worst recognition better than google voice overs"

(Same question, spoken by a Finn)

------
jessep
I have spent two sessions experimenting with the iPhone voice commands. Both
times ended with me with tears of laughter, literally. I have never, not once,
during one of these sessions gotten my iphone to do what I wanted to or call
the right person. I find it genuinely hilarious though ... and adorable. "My
wiiittttlle iphonie wonieee. Are you learning to talkiee walkiieeee?"

------
mike-cardwell
I wont believe that it is as accurate as the video portrays until I see it
with my own eyes.

~~~
warrenmiller
if you have a british accent it doesn't work. really really doesn't work :(

~~~
ZeroGravitas
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt-DWr7208A>

The Youtube auto-transcription (press the CC button to view) of Glaswegian on
this BBC Scotland comedy show is hilariously bad, though I'm not sure how most
non-Scottish humans would do either.

examples: "not a care in the world" is repeated twice in the audio and
translated as "the attack killed a lot of them" the first time and "months of
camelot of" the second.

------
kingkilr
I've had a G1 for about a year now... I really want to upgrade at this point.

------
sliverstorm
yet another reason to lament my inability to install android on my nokia.
Android software + nokia hardware = best of both worlds

~~~
sn
I think there was some progress on the n900.

------
akadruid
There's increasingly mainstream coverage of apps which are incompatible with
almost every android phone out there - requiring 2.1 or even 2.2 like this
does. I wonder how long it will take for manufacturers to take upgrades
seriously? Some of them are still abandoning their handsets as soon as they go
out the door.

I suspect many of the early adopters are now including this in their
purchasing decision when they upgrade.

~~~
dannyr
Not almost every Android phone.

More than 62% of Android phones are either 2.1 or 2.2.

[http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-
ve...](http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-
versions.html)

~~~
booticon
60% is 2.1, however, and both of these new Android features are only supported
in 2.2. I have an Eris that went on sale less than a year ago, and chances are
my phone will never be updated to 2.2.

~~~
dannyr
My guess is that most phones that are still on 1.5 or 1.6 will never be
updated to 2.1 or 2.2

If the phone is 2.1 now, it will probably get 2.2 by the end of the year.

~~~
roel_v
HTC started the rollout of 2.2 for the Desire last week. The Desire is selling
well in Europe. I presume they're also rolling it out for the Legend, which
was heavily mass-marketed for the last 3-4 months. I have the impression HTC
is _the_ main Android vendor in Europe at the moment. Just this rollout will
push 2.2 deployment numbers up, I think.

As far as I know this is the first mainstream upgrade of phones from 2.1 to
2.2 (apart from the Nexus which is, imo, niche). Or did I miss any?

