Super-small Voice-controlled Wireless Phone

Noah Bergevin writes: "While web browsing one day, I ran across a little gadget at a favorite e-tailer of mine, and fell in love with it at first sight. It's a super-small cordless telephone that you hang on your ear, and which uses voice-recognition instead of a physical keypad to do the dialing. It's from a company called ArialPhone. They have only been around since January 2001, and the phone has been out for about a year." Read on to see what's good and not-as-good about this phone with the rest of Noah's review.

The phone comes in two pieces, (much like other cordless phones). The earset weighs only 1.1oz (including the lithium polymer battery, smaller than a pack of gum), and only has a single button on it. The base station plugs into your analog phone line, and connects to your computer via USB. The included software runs a custom copy of IBM's ViaVoice speech engine to interpret your voice commands; right now the software only runs on Windows.

The software integrates into Outlook, ACT! and Windows Address Book. At boot-up, the software looks at the list of contacts, and loads their names into a custom speech dictionary. If you want to call John Public, you press the button on the earset and say "Call John Public at work." The software matches your speech to John's name, looks up John's information, finds his Work number, and dials it for you. (Very cool). Dialing by numbers is done by pressing the button, and saying "Dial" and announcing the digits you want to dial, (i.e. "Dial one eight-hundred five five five one two one two").

All the other telephone functions are also handled via voice command, (answer, hang up, flash, mute, hold, volume, etc).

Right now the software only works with telephony functions, but they have just released an add-on package that lets you use the phone as a wireless headset for your computer, (for voice-dictation, IP Telephony, other voice-recognition software, etc). They say they want to extend the software to handle home-automation and entertainment, (can anyone say voice-controlled X10?!?)

The phones are priced at $300, which is targeted at the business crowd. It's a little steep for home use.

I happened to find a deal on mine, and have been using it for about a month now. I work out of my home for a software company on the other side of the country. It is very handy to be able to talk to my co-workers simply by saying their name. The size and form factor are also very nice. I can wear it around all day, and am able to take a call from anywhere near the house, (office, back deck, breakfast table, neighbor's house, changing a diaper, etc).

I know this doesn't have much to do w/ Linux, but the geek in me couldn't keep my mouth shut! I thought this might be an interesting story, simply for the application of voice technology and miniaturization.

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Comments

This..

[iONiUM]

Is a really good idea, especially if you could hook it up to an X10. Being able to say "lights off" is much easier than having to clap :-).

The only concern I would have in the business application is what frequencies it uses and how secure it is. Most companies I know dislike cordless phones for this exact reason, and usually stay with in building lines. But they probably have a solution for this already.

Re:This..

[Anonymous Coward]

We actually had this phone demonstrated at our office. It was a joke. It took the sales guy an average of 4 tries to get the thing to dial simple local calls. The demo really went south when he passed it around to others around the table. It couldn't understand some people at all, despite the "speaker independent voice recognition".

But does the speech recognition actually work?

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, so this phone does speech recognition. That's cool, if not exactly ground-breakingly new. But does the speech recognition actually work?

Students of this sort of thing are taught all about the problems of getting speech recognition to work in noisy environments, in a car, in a restaurant, in a busy street etc. On top of the noise compensation problems, you have something called the Lombard effect, which means that when they're in a noisy environment PEOPLE TEND TO SHOUT INTO THEIR PHONE to try and make themselves heard. And this means that the speech you used to train your phone in your nice quiet office no longer matches the aggressive shouty tone of voice you're currently using.

True, there are ways and means round both of these problems. But they're by no means 100%, or even 95% reliable. And if I buy a phone that has speech recognition as its primary (its only?) interface, I'd want to make pretty damn sure I can use it anywhere.

So, the question for Noah - you can use this phone while changing a diaper, or around the breakfast table, but can you use it in the middle of Grand Central Station?

Saw it on TV

[Nogami_Saeko]

A local computer reviewer had a bit on this unit - said it was nearly impossible to get the earpiece/mic unit to stay on the site of their head, and that they found it uncomfortably heavy.

I'd prefer something that used a small in-ear speaker/mic combination (something like my pair of Sony EX70LPs, although those don't have mics) and a small pager-sized beltpack.

Besides looking like a spy, I think it would be less intrusive and not look like you had become a borg drone.

Voice Recognition?

[taernim]

If this thing relies almost solely (if not completely) on voice recognition, how accurate are the results?
I have a mid-range priced phone by Verizon that supports voice recognition. The thing is ok, but it isn't very accurate... especially with multiple words.

For example, when I tried to call "Rob cell"... I got back:

Automated voice: "Did you say 'Rob Work'?"
Me:"No"
Automated voice: "Did you say 'Rob home'?"
Me:"No"
Automated voice: "Did you say 'Robert apartment'?"
Me:"NO"
Automated voice: "Did you say 'Robert cell'?"
Me:"NO!!"
Automated voice: "Calling: 'Robert cell'"
Me:"GRRR!"

Questions for the reviewer:

[JoeGee]

What kind of range does this device have from the base unit?

What is the sound quality like?

How does the headset respond to sources of interference like running microwave ovens?

How long does a charged battery last compared to the manufacturer's claim?