Google Introduces New Android Features

adeelarshad82 writes "Google introduced the next generation of interaction with its Android operating system by introducing a set of new features. The most prominent one is the voice-driven actions. Google executives outlined 12 new 'Voice Actions for Android,' including phone calls, reminder e-mails, direction search, and music search. The app is called 'Voice Search,' requires Android 2.2, and is available in the Android Market now. Voice actions can be triggered by clicking the 'microphone' icon on the screen. Saying 'call John Smith at home' will trigger the contacts list and voice dialer, 'find art museums in Amsterdam' would launch a Google Maps application, and 'listen to Ace of Base' will search for music from the artist on Pandora, Last.fm, or another music application. Another improvement worth a mention is 'Chrome to Phone,' allows users to click on a new 'mobile phone' icon to send links, YouTube videos, even directions, to the phone. So far, the features are exclusive to Android phones and US English, although the capabilities will be moved to other languages and other operating systems (including the iPhone) in the future." Add reader CWmike: "JR Raphael takes a first look at Voice Actions for Android, and tells you how to get voice control even if you are not on Froyo."

Comments

Please don'd die

[pirot]

My most common command to my Google Nexus phone is: "Please (beeeeep) battery, do not die. It's been just 3 hours since I fully charged you." I hope that the next generation of Android will teach the phone to obey.

Re:Please don'd die

[Nerdfest]

I get that even on an old HTC Diamond (running a hacked version of Android with no power saving), so if you're getting that little, you should check your battery. I would believe as little as 8 hours of heavy use though. Whoever figures out how to store a magnitude increase in power for portable devices is going to make an absolute killing. It's the biggest obstacle to portable computing right now.

Re:Please don'd die

[Jesterboy]

My most common command to my Google Nexus phone is: "Please (beeeeep) battery, do not die. It's been just 3 hours since I fully charged you." I hope that the next generation of Android will teach the phone to obey.

You're exaggerating by quite a bit or you have a broken phone. I got ~30 hours on a single charge running stock Nexus One ROM. I am currently running Cyanogenmod 6.0-RC2, and after 8.5 hours of a few calls, a few Youtube/Flash videos and a whole lot of internet browsing I still have 71% charge left.

Maybe you have the brightness cranked to the highest setting? Enabling Automatic Brightness (Settings->Display->Brightness in Cyanogen; probably the same in stock) will make the biggest difference in battery life. Although, even running it at the highest brightness setting, I've managed somewhere over 12 hours of time after a full charge.

Re:Please don'd die

[tyrione]

My most common command to my Google Nexus phone is: "Please (beeeeep) battery, do not die. It's been just 3 hours since I fully charged you." I hope that the next generation of Android will teach the phone to obey.

You're exaggerating by quite a bit or you have a broken phone. I got ~30 hours on a single charge running stock Nexus One ROM. I am currently running Cyanogenmod 6.0-RC2, and after 8.5 hours of a few calls, a few Youtube/Flash videos and a whole lot of internet browsing I still have 71% charge left.

Maybe you have the brightness cranked to the highest setting? Enabling Automatic Brightness (Settings->Display->Brightness in Cyanogen; probably the same in stock) will make the biggest difference in battery life. Although, even running it at the highest brightness setting, I've managed somewhere over 12 hours of time after a full charge.

I believe he's citing actual continuous talk time, not idle time.

Re:Please don'd die

[pirot]

Yes, I am exaggerating. And yes, I actively using the phone, so it never lasts a full day. Not that many other smartphones last much longer. To whomever maked me as troll: understand the difference between humorous and serious comments.

Re:Please don'd die

[h4rr4r]

Who the hell is on the phone for 3 hours? I don't talk that much on the damn thing in a month.

Re:Please don'd die

[pirot]

Using, not talking.

Re:Please don'd die

[h4rr4r]

I use my droid all damn day, it gets charged over night. If I watched flash videos for maybe 3 hours that might do it. The GPS is a real killer though, I just plug it in when its in the car dock.

Re:Please don'd die

[Thinboy00]

Yeah, that person should turn in their geek card; who hasn't used a smartphone continuously for an extended period of time?

Re:Please don'd die

[pirot]

Maybe it is the GPS then. I used to have it always on in my BBerry Curve, and I had no problems. Thanks for the advice!

Re:Please don'd die

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Well apparently some people have friends and colleagues that like to call them and have discussions. While others apparently are loners and use their phone only to order take out.

Re:Please don'd die

[h4rr4r]

Try turning it off. I only have a problem when I use the navigate though, but I turn that and wifi and bluetooth off when I don't need them. Power widget is great for that.

If you had a blackberry Curve, I doubt you had no problems:)

Re:Please don'd die

[h4rr4r]

Some of us go over to peoples homes or speak to them outside of our basement dwellings. You can often arrange to meet people in bars, restaurants and other social places .... The More You Know!

Re:Please don'd die

[victorhooi]

heya,

Actually, I don't think he's necessarily lying, he just didn't give enough details on what exactly he's doing with it. No need for the Android fanboys to go lynch him because he insulted your dear Android...haha...

I have a new Google Nexus One, and the battery life is appalling - I get maybe what, around eight hours, before it's down to the 15% warning? This is on automatic brightness, the occasional web surfing, some SMS-ing and light calls, and no wifi. Also, this is in the city, with nearly full reception (in low reception areas, I assume it boosts transmit power). I'm essentially permanently tethered to either the dock on my desk, or a handy power point *sigh*.

My best friend also has one (we bought it together), and her battery life is similarly appalling, although slightly better since she turns the brightness down to minimum, and doesn't really make any calls.

I love the phone, I just wish the battery life wasn't so abysmal.

Cheers,
Victor

Re:Please don'd die

[pirot]

My friends call me when they want takeout.

Re:Please don'd die

[shutdown -p now]

If you have a new phone (as in, you've got it last week), be sure you've got through several full discharge-charge cycles. It has been noted by numerous people, myself included, that it does improve battery time significantly, though exact reasons are unclear (and not everyone who tries it reports improvement; but then some people report great battery life out of the box).

Re:Please don'd die

[GooberToo]

Turning off the GPS has a negligible difference in power consumption. For it to make a big difference, an application has to be using it. Just having the GPS in warm standby (enabled) typically will not exceed 5% or so of battery life. For most people this is not noticeable. Better to uninstall whatever poorly written applications you have installed.

Also, if you turn off your GPS, the next time you use it, especially if you move far from the last location you had it enabled, you might find it takes up to ten minutes to determine your GPS position.

If you find you must turn off your GPS to make your battery last, its almost a guarantee you have an absolutely crappy application installed on your phone. You can help locate it by reviewing your applications which requires fine grained location information.

Re:Please don'd die

[Anonymous Coward]

I am currently running Cyanogenmod 6.0-RC2, and after 8.5 hours of a few calls, a few Youtube/Flash videos and a whole lot of internet browsing I still have 71% charge left.

Ye, nice but how many people use rooted phone?

Re:Please don'd die

[CTachyon]

...This is on automatic brightness...

FWIW, I highly recommend setting your brightness to the minimum the OS will let you. In my experience, the Nexus One screen is useless in any amount of daylight, no matter how high it cranks up the screen's light levels, so you might as well not waste that energy and find a nice shady spot instead. My "Battery use" screen consistently shows that the display sucks down the vast majority of my power usage, even if I've only had the screen on for 30 minutes throughout the day, and I still get through the day with 40-60% of my battery remaining. In a pinch, I can go 36 hours without charging, especially if I minimize screen activity.

Also, get Watts, and try to correlate the slope of the graph with what you were doing at that time. I found it quite helpful.

Re:Please don'd die

[Anonymous Coward]

It might be your 3G connection emptying your batteries: try Juicedefender, and app that handles your data connection and only turns it on for 1 minute in every 15 when you are not using the phone. This and its other features massively improve battery live.

Re:Please don'd die

[Anonymous Coward]

Also check the running apps under app management. There maybe something in there sucking it dry. I have N1 and battery is more than acceptable. Easy gets me through a day with good amount of usage including video, music streaming. Like someone else suggested, check the battery usage also, excellent android feature.

Finally, a replacement battery is $25, probably cheaper off ebay. Its easy to swap out a dead one for a fresh one, takes about a minute and you are up and running again. Another advantage over the iPhone.

Re:Please don'd die

[RichiH]

Every time you restart your phone, kill all applications. Every time you disconnect the charger, kill all applications.

Re:Please don'd die

[Anonymous Coward]

I have the HTC Desire which seems pretty close to the Nexus - the way I manage my battery is to have the widgets for WiFi, Bluetooth, Mobile Data and GPS on the homepage and I generally have them all turned off apart from WiFi, I only enable the others when I need them (they all seem to be battery killers, especially if you're in a weak signal area). I also don't use a task killer as apparently some of them drain battery. Following this approach my battery can last 36 hours on a quiet day, with heavy usage (internet, email, a couple calls, listening to MP3s etc) it can still go from 7am to 11pm without needing a charge. It definitely needs more micro-managing than any phone I've had in the past but if you take the few seconds here and there you can get some pretty big returns in battery life.

Re:Please don'd die

[jseale]

Same here with my Moto Cliq XT. This thing runs warm most of the time and that's when I can tell that it's snarfing up the battery like hell. It's still a nice phone though.

Re:Please don'd die

[delinear]

Well people claim the batteries don't need conditioning, but that in many cases it takes a few charge/discharge cycles for the software to correctly display the charge level. I know in my case when I first got my Desire, I decided to completely discharge it - it was already pretty low after the day's use but it took over 2 hours of streaming HD Youtube video to kill it, I suspect the charge was actually much higher than what was being reported, and since then my reported charge always seems higher than it used to after similar levels of use (this might just be psychological I guess - maybe I was playing with the phone more in the first few days).

Re:Please don'd die

[delinear]

Ditto on the 36 hours with a HTC Desire (which I think is pretty close to Nexus in specs). The key for me is managing mobile data and gps (I always have wifi enabled as I use it throughout the day) and leaving bluetooth off. Doing this I can still use the phone for what I consider "heavy" usage and have it last until the next day, although in practice it means it's usually 40%+ charged at night when I plug it in. Another thing to note, some people suggest that once the battery is fully charged, it stops charging and thereafter loses charge because it doesn't detect the fall off and charge again - therefore if you plug it in to charge earlier in the evening, you might find you've already lost 10% in the morning, if this is the case just unplug it and pop it back on charge while you're getting ready and you'll probably squeeze a couple extra hours out of it.

Re:Please don'd die

[delinear]

The only difference worth noting is probably live wallpapers - most branded phones have them enabled by default. If you're really struggling for power, try a standard wallpaper and see if that helps. Aside from that I'd guess the differences in how the ROMs use the battery are minimal (it's more likely that people who have the know-how to root the phone are also more capable of micro-managing their power usage).

Re:Please don'd die

[Anonymous Coward]

People without smart phones? Maybe that Hans Reiser dude?

Re:Please don'd die

[Shakrai]

Well people claim the batteries don't need conditioning, but that in many cases it takes a few charge/discharge cycles for the software to correctly display the charge level.

That's exactly right. The advice that I've received says to charge li-ion batteries as frequently as possible, but if you want your battery meter to remain honest you'll need to run them down occasionally. It's best to avoid doing this more often than necessary -- deep discharge cycles impose more wear and tear on the battery.

I plug my Droid into my work PC in "charge only" mode and allow it to charge off USB while I'm at my desk. It also charges overnight while I sleep. I rarely let the battery run past 50-60%, so I know I've always got some runtime in reserve when I need it.

Re:Please don'd die

[gollito]

So do you run with every single widget on, screen at full brightness and every peripheral turned on?

I have an EVO and I get, under normal usage, 12 hours easy. If I go light on the browsing I can push that to 14 hours. My record is just over 24 hours on a single charge and that was with lite to normal usage.

Yay

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if this will work as good as my Google Voice recognition... recent message: "Not long way because I thought they were. What slobs. I know that there is You know one before the other but sorry about the got a computer Yeah, and Over. For for."

Can't wait to see these voice actions in action!

Re:Yay

[NotBornYesterday]

Doesn't matter what the new features are. Verizon & friends will rip them out and replace them with pay-to-play versions.

Re:Yay

[h4rr4r]

It actually works really well, it only likes short English words though. It does not like German words used in English for one, both schadenfreude and Reinheitsgebot failed

Re:Yay

[h4rr4r]

They have not been doing that recently, all the android phones have google navigation instead of the verizon thing.

Re:Yay

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but zeitgeist and gestalt worked fine for me (also German words used in English). Then again, I have found that not only do these apps (Google Voice's transcription, Android's Voice Search) work only with English, they work best with a male native Californian as the speaker. It's a plus for me that I happen to be a native male Californian.

Re:Yay

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, right now, it doesn't work at all - it just gets "server problem". Great, we slashdotted Google's new Voice Search...

Re:Yay

[nine-times]

Voice recognition is much easier when you limit the vocabulary to a finite set of commands.

That said, I've never really seen the value of voice commands and voice recognition. It's one of those things that people get super-excited about because it seems all science-fictiony, but it's a poorly performing solution in search of a problem.

Re:Yay

[santiagodraco]

You obviously need new friends with better enunciation...

When using google voice enabled apps linked to searches (not the google transcription stuff which does no searching) they are amazingly accurate. So I don't think you can fairly compare the two. Google has a very powerful set of associative algorithms running to improve the accuracy of these types of voice enabled commands and searches.

Re:Yay

[Fnkmaster]

Why anybody would buy a carrier-crippled handset in this day and age is beyond me. Just say no. Sack up, buy a real man's phone and stop your damned whining.

Re:Yay

[cduffy]

Typing in addresses and proper names for destinations on a phone keyboard is awful.

Saying "Navigate to La Quinta" and having it figure out the right thing to do (real-world example from a recent vacation, phone running Android 2.1) is far, far more convenient.

Re:Yay

[shutdown -p now]

I tried it and it seems to be just as good as most previous attempts at the same thing (MS has been trying to do voice input for ages - you might have seen it in Office...) - which is to say, it mostly sucks. It couldn't handle most of contact list at all, but that's probably because those names aren't English, and I have no idea how it thinks they should be pronounced as written (vs how they are actually pronounced).

For addresses, though, I expected better. I've got about 50% successful matches, and those were when I was speaking really, really slowly. Otherwise it gave me all kinds of creative options for what it thinks "westminster" and "alderbridge" sounds like. Now I'm not a native language speaker and I do have a slight accent, but all native speakers that I've met told be that my spoken English is very good for a foreigner.

One other thing that I usually expect Google first and foremost to do right is location awareness. I said "map of richmond", and, sure enough, it showed me one - of Richmond, VA. Well, I'm in Vancouver, BC (and the phone knows it - after all, it shows weather for it, I'm signed into Latitude, etc) - guess which Richmond I actually want to see by default? While I'm at it, it couldn't pick up "BC" either, unless I very clearly said it as two distinct letters with a pause in between (like you never actually say it in normal speech).

Finally, it does take quite a while to get that stuff processed, especially for longer addresses and names (that using 10Mbps WiFi, which seems to matter as it mentions some "server"). 1-2 seconds is okay, 8-10 is seriously annoying. Though it might be due to their servers being seriously overloaded now...

Overall, not impressed, sorry. If you've seen the previous attempts, and expect some kind of breakthrough here because it's Google, you can forget about it. It doesn't seem to be any better than it used to be.

Re:Yay

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree, I use MS voice commands all the time while driving thru my BT deck to call people and play music. The recognition is quite good almost always understands what I'm saying on the first try and I never need to keep an eye off the road.

I don't know what andriod uses or even if the recognition is done locally or sent a networked speech server for processing where commands sent back to the device but I can't imagine it not being worth having for those times where you can't fiddle with you can't fiddle with your device.

Then again I've tried voice commands on black berry phones and it sucked big time.. It was a sad joke..totally unusable.

Re:Yay

[Joe Tie.]

I have no complaints. It seems very dependent on accent. The midwestern one of myself and my friends tends to get somewhere around 90% accuracy. Some people I work with in texas have something closer to 20%.

Re:Yay

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if this will work as good as my Google Voice recognition... recent message: "Not long way because I thought they were. What slobs. I know that there is You know one before the other but sorry about the got a computer Yeah, and Over. For for."

Can't wait to see these voice actions in action!

I really hope Google Voice never gets any better. It's too hilarious to change. I am thrilled with how bad it is.

Re:Yay

[Anonymous Coward]

If you watch the video in the article it's pretty funny when it put "lemme" in the text instead of "let me".

Re:Yay

[hitmark]

makes one wonder what kind of threats verizon have leveled vs google to make google take a new stand on net neutrality in the wireless space.

Re:Yay

[NotBornYesterday]

Right ... so you're saying that I can use a Droid to create a hotspot without either a) paying a Verizon tax or b) rooting it to undo Verizon douchebaggery?

Part of the bluetooth voice dialing

[stevew]

This feature is really part of the upgrade to the bluetooth stack me thinks. Up until now, there was no way to do voice dialing with Android phones. There was a problem in the bluetooth stack (as explained by a little birdie who lives at google to me some months ago.) Android 2.2 can now perform this action even though my old Samsung phone has had the feature for 2 years Plus..

Re:Part of the bluetooth voice dialing

[Anonymous Coward]

It does a lot more than that, but yes, they were behind until today. Now its voice commands are far more powerful than any other phone OS that I know of.

Re:Part of the bluetooth voice dialing

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? Because from day 1 on my droid I just hit the voice search button, say, 'Call Bob', and a window pops up asking if I want to call bob. I do have to hit a button on the phone to confirm which name I want to dial, so I can't dial from exclusively using voice, but I like confirming the name.

Re:Part of the bluetooth voice dialing

[element-o.p.]

I certainly hope so. I was really disappointed to find that voice dialing did not work on the Android, even though my old Motorola...whatever it was, the next step down from the RAZR, I think...did voice dialing over bluetooth just fine. I've got a bluetooth headset on my motorcycle helmet, and, well, it's difficult to pull the phone out of a zippered pocket, dial the phone number on a touch screen and hold the phone during a call while on a bike :)

(Cue the "don't ride and talk, you @#$!!! idiot!" posts in 3...2...1...)

Re:Part of the bluetooth voice dialing

[Belial6]

On my myTouch and Nexus 1, voice dialing worked from day one as well. My big complaint was that there was NOT a confirmation button. This meant that when the phone invariably got the wrong name, it would call the wrong person. I have heard people complain that Android couldn't do voice dialing, but I have yet to see one that doesn't.

Re:Part of the bluetooth voice dialing

[jellomizer]

What the iPhone has that feature for like a year. I thought all iPhone features were lame while all android features were superior. I guess it is just a different set of priorities.

Re:Part of the bluetooth voice dialing

[sharkey]

The Motorola Droid does "Voice Dialing", in that you select the voice dial app by hand, speak a command, then acknowledge any prompts by hand. It does not do hands free voice dialing (wired or bluetooth) in the manner that many phones have been doing for 5 years and more: Touch button on hands-free kit and interact totally by voice.

Re:Part of the bluetooth voice dialing

[Anonymous Coward]

My G1 has had voice dialing for quite some time now. This update seems to be a centralized voice app that can trigger more than just the dialer. We've had a voice dialer, voice search, etc, but they were all separate apps.

Re:Part of the bluetooth voice dialing

[Joe Tie.]

Ohhh! I wonder if that's the reason that android phone's with sense come with a custom bluetooth extension that breaks compatibility with a couple normal android apps. I'd been wondering what the point of fragmenting it like that was. If it was to get an early fix, I can see it as justification. Even if it's not a choice I'd have personally made.

Re:Part of the bluetooth voice dialing

[CNeb96]

This feature is really part of the upgrade to the bluetooth stack me thinks. Up until now, there was no way to do voice dialing with Android phones.

No this feature always came with android 2.2 but most reviews didn't cover it for some reason.

http://developer.android.com/sdk/android-2.2-highlights.html

Re:Part of the bluetooth voice dialing

[ndixon]

The Motorola Droid does "Voice Dialing", in that you select the voice dial app by hand, speak a command, then acknowledge any prompts by hand. It does not do hands free voice dialing (wired or bluetooth) in the manner that many phones have been doing for 5 years and more: Touch button on hands-free kit and interact totally by voice.

This is one of the main reasons why I'm not going near Android yet: "all with only a single touch of your phone." is not hands-free.

When Android phones appear with true hands-free voice dialing (through a Bluetooth headset) and can run for 3-4 days on a single charge, I'll be interested.
Until then, I'm sticking with dumb-phones.

(Samsung phones like my S7220 don't have hands-free voice-dialing either, any of them as far as I can tell - the market-led engineering at Samsung dictates that smile detection and "fake calls" are more important - but I can go six days on a single charge *)

I don't expect to see that longevity on Android until 2012, if at all.

* But only because I have no friends

Re:Part of the bluetooth voice dialing

[Anonymous Coward]

Bluetooth voice dialing was in the Android spec since first release or so I'm led to believe.

There was a problem with the sampling rate on the links to the BT devices that degraded voice quality enough to cause the voice recognizer to have issue with certain pitches of voice that didn't sample well.
There was a variable BT_VOICE_DIAL_DISABLE or something like that which basically caused any build from 1.6 to 2.1 to refuse to acknowledge the command from a headset.

Google wanted to have an in-house solution rather than license the tech from elsewhere. You could have turned the feature back on by recompiling the BT stack but would have had to possibly suffer the less functional links.

apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Iphone had this a long time ago.

Re:apple

[LBArrettAnderson]

It's much, much more powerful than what you see in the /. summary, and more powerful than what iPhone has. Yes, part of the update is overdue, but they went above and beyond.

Re:apple

[Anonymous Coward]

No it isn't. My iPhone can do ALL those searches faster and with far more usability and style.

Re:apple

[Luckyo]

It's very long overdue considering that voice commands have been in the most basic, cheap ass nokia feature phones for years, not to even mention smartphone line.

I'm quite surprised no one complained about lack of those before. I can't even imagine not being able to tell my phone to call someone on my contact list when it's in my pocket and bluetooth earpiece is in its place. It just seems so... last millenium.

Re:apple

[pookemon]

Let me know when the iPhone gets reception.

Re:apple

[Anonymous Coward]

You can send and compose a text message or e-mail with voice and voice alone?

Re:apple

[Namarrgon]

Voice dialling (and a few other voice commands like search) have been available on Android since 1.6, though they only added voice dialling through Bluetooth in 2.2.

This update adds a number of extra voice commands beyond that.

Re:apple

[webgrappa]

No one complained because no one uses it, I suppose. I have a Nokia E71 and people every time can't believe my phone has such a feat.

Re:apple

[ihatejobs]

No, you can't you Apple fanboy. Read the fucking article and get a clue before you run your mouth. Your iPhone does not have ALL these capabilities. This update caught Android up to everyone else, and leapfrogged them all in the process.

Re:apple

[Silas is back]

What? I always h



--

Just need to shrink it down a little

[Anonymous Coward]

*tap*

Picard to Enterprise.

Re:Just need to shrink it down a little

[Dishevel]

Always wondered. Why do they have to give origination data. One would think that the communicator already knows it is one Picard.

It should just be *tap*

Enterprise.

Yes captain?

Re:Just need to shrink it down a little

[RCourtney]

Always wondered. Why do they have to give origination data. One would think that the communicator already knows it is one Picard. It should just be *tap* Enterprise. Yes captain?

Because otherwise the computer would interpret any mention of "Enterprise" to open communications, even if Picard was, say, telling someone how many years he has been aboard Entreprise, or calling out to LaForge who was right across 10 Forward.

And who talks to themselves in the 3rd person? It was a somewhat safe way to activate the communicator.

I'd say it could be a security measure too, but there were too many episodes were random people successfully used someone else's communicator for one reason or another.

That's my theory anyway :P

Re:Just need to shrink it down a little

[inu_maru]

authentication?[/epileptic trees]

Re:Just need to shrink it down a little

[Moridin42]

If it is voice activated, then it would seem to be unnecessary to activate with a tap.

If you're going to have that touch activation, voicing the origin is unnecessary.

Re:Just need to shrink it down a little

[bigstrat2003]

Why do people say "Hey, it's $name" when talking to someone on the phone, even if the person should recognize their voice? The self-identification presumably isn't for the computer's benefit, it's for the crew's benefit.

Re:Just need to shrink it down a little

[Zebedeu]

Because the receiver is also on a communicator, and as far as I remember, it was a little bit of metal on the wearer's shirt without any user interface.

When you call someone you have the choice to start speaking immediately and have to identify yourself, or have the communicator say "%name is calling" before you're able to answer.

Speaking of which, there is an app for Android which does just that -- substitutes (or overlays) your ring with the caller's name.
It's called SayMyName: http://code.google.com/p/roadtoadc

Works very, very well.

Re:Just need to shrink it down a little

[RedK]

*TAP*

"Enterprise, beam me up"

"Uh who's this ?"

"Picard, don't you have call display ?"

"I don't stare down at the monitor sir, everything is voice activated around here, I'm not even near the console".

"Ugh, Beam me up".

"Right after my coffee break, Union rules. Enterprise out".

"Wait, who are you ?"

*TAP*

"Hello ? Enterprise ?"

Yeah, origin doesn't matter.

Re:Just need to shrink it down a little

[delinear]

What if they found during tests that there were too many instances where people had to say their own name (imagine if your name was also a common word like Brown or Green), or where people clambering into a Jefferies tube would accidentally tap activate their communicator and so they decided a two-stage activation was best, you can do either on it's own and the request times out unless you do the other within X seconds (still going to be an issue when you're asking for the green tool case while climbing into a Jefferies tube, but far less common).

Re:Just need to shrink it down a little

[delinear]

Yes, there are all kinds of reasons why it's useful to have the name - maybe it's for authentication, voice patterns change under different conditions, the computer can probably compensate for this to some degree but it's going to be far less processor intensive if it's doing so using a known word like the name (it can apply its stress algorithms to the finite list of names and find possible matches then filter on these for the other words in the sentence). Alternatively, maybe it's a redundant practice used as a failsafe in case an issue with the computer means reliance on an older communication channel that doesn't do on the fly voice recognition. Ultimately we know it's actually because it's less confusing to the audience, we know when they start a sentence that way they're talking to the computer and not to thin air, but that doesn't mean there aren't also valid reasons why it might be so.

Re:Just need to shrink it down a little

[Anonymous Coward]

Always wondered. Why do they have to give origination data. One would think that the communicator already knows it is one Picard.

It should just be *tap*

Enterprise.

Yes captain?

The treksplanation for that would be that this is so the computer knows it was an intentional triggering of the communicator.
Imagine falling onto it, yelling "Ow, that hurts!", and the computer starts dialing crewman "Owdat-Hertz".

Re:Just need to shrink it down a little

[Moridin42]

Yeah.. totally impossible for an interstellar spaceship building civilization with shipboard computers that can converse with you to fill in the details.

*tap* to Riker

Where as Riker hears *chirp* from Troi

but oh no, communications tech, thats the real final frontier.

Re:Just need to shrink it down a little

[Anonymous Coward]

*ring, ring*

*ring, ring*

*ring, ring*

*ring, ring*

"YES, I FUCKING T!
WHICH ONE OF YOU TECHNOLOGICALLY IMPAIRED FUCK HEADS DEEMED IT NECESSARY TO INTERRUPT ME IN THE MIDDLE OF MY AFTERNOON RAID?"

"...
Do you have any idea to whom you're talking?"

"What? No."

"This is the CEO's secretary, and you can start cleaning your desk right now."

"...
And do you have any idea to whom you're talking?"

"What?! No."

"Lucked out, then, huh?"

*click*

Executives

[adewolf]

Why do these companies insist on having executives being their spokespersons. No one trusts them or believes a word out their mouths.

Re:Executives

[Dalzhim]

To give them some credibility as people who are generally aware of most of what's going on inside.

Re:Executives

[hedwards]

Because we always believe what spokesman tell us.

Re:Executives

[Bill_the_Engineer]

It's not like Google executives are like BP's... wait... never mind.

Be sure to uninstall Chrome to Phone beta first

[deep9x]

If you had it previously installed, it'll silently just error out when you try to install the Marketplace version. Hopefully this comment will save 10 minutes of going "WTF?"

Can't you just start by saying...

[bugs2squash]

"Click microphone icon"

Re:Can't you just start by saying...

[s7uar7]

But that would activate it every time someone near you says, "click, my crow phone, I con." It would be a lawsuit waiting to happen.

huh...

[unicorn child]

I think I have that on my phone...

Improving battery life would be a better strategy

[bogaboga]

While I congratulate Google on this achievement, I think Google and Android would be better served if there were better results when it comes to today's Android phones and battery life.

Just imagine what the the headline "Android phones can now maintain battery capacity at greater than 80% after an average day of use" would create.

The buzz and positive publicity with this kind of information would be priceless.

The next Android ad

[martin-boundary]

User: "Tea. Earl Grey. Black"

Android Phone: "Here I am, brain the size of a planet..." *Sigh*

Hold on, maybe that's the new iPhone ad...

Re:The next Android ad

[mynicknamewasused]

hot?

Re:The next Android ad

[magus_melchior]

What would be even better: At the end of the song, it reminds you in Patrick Stewart's voice, "Next time, order it hot, not black."

Re:The next Android ad

[h4rr4r]

Earl Grey is a black tea. You could have it hot if you wanted though.

Re:The next Android ad

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahhh!!!!! What a desecration! It's Tea. Earl Grey. Hot!

I was going to order a tea this way once at a high tea place but then chickened out when the server came and just ordered it normally.

Re:The next Android ad

[ben_kelley]

The first million years were the worst. So were the second million.

Re:The next Android ad

[moreati]

Hold on, maybe that's the new iPhone ad...

That one is "And then of course I've got this terrible pain in all the antennas down my left side."

Re:The next Android ad

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, "Tea, Earl Grey. Black." just sounds very civil war era southerner.

Re:The next Android ad

[martin-boundary]

Or you could have it white, with milk :). But yeah, I fucked up.

Re:The next Android ad

[Anonymous Coward]

Star Trek reference WIN!

Re:The next Android ad

[Namarrgon]

The third ten million I didn't enjoy at all. After that I went into a bit of a decline.

Re:The next Android ad

[Anonymous Coward]

Sir, You can be Picard and order "Tea. Earl Grey. Hot." or Janway and order "Coffee. Black." But you can't be both. So pick one. Or the borg will assimilate you.

Re:The next Android ad

[L4t3r4lu5]

I'll let you have it with a little lemon, if you wish, but if you dare put milk into Earl Grey tea I'll personally come and pump the entire contents of the closest septic tank into your mattress.

Next you'll be telling me that you have ketchup with baked beans! They fucking come in ketchup!

Re:The next Android ad

[RedK]

I put milk in Earl Grey tea. In fact, I put milk in my English Breakfeast tea too. All the time. No milk, no tea. Please be there around 4 for your septic tank thing, I'll have the Earl ready with some milk and crumpets.

Re:The next Android ad

[Anonymous Coward]

> Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.

FTFY

Re:The next Android ad

[delinear]

Not necessarily - in the UK if you order tea it pretty much always comes with milk unless you specify otherwise, so tea, Early Grey, black would be a perfectly cromulent order over here.

Re:The next Android ad

[delinear]

Actually the ketchup you buy seems sweeter than what comes in baked beans. In experimenting to find the right quantities to make barbecue baked beans I found a ratio of 3 parts HP brown to 1 part Heinz ketchup to be just right, as the sweetness of the ketchup takes the sharp edge off the brown. Add to the beans in quantities to taste :)

Re:The next Android ad

[h4rr4r]

And that is yet another reason why Americans think of you guys as a bunch of pansies.

"Separate saucer section"

[Anonymous Coward]

"security protocol authorization Riker Omega Three"

Voice control

[gilesjuk]

iPhone has had voice control since last year when 3GS was launched.

I don't find such things useful, but I imagine for the disabled or car drivers it can be handy.

Re:Voice control

[timeOday]

How much voice control? "Find nearest gas station" sounds like a handy thing to do, without trying to peck away at a (virtual) keyboard while driving. (We'll assume the driver is using a dash mount). Does the iPhone do this? Maybe it does, I wouldn't know.

Of course, it all hinges on how well it actually works. My Garmin 60 CS has the ability to search for "points of interest" (including gas stations). But searching is so clunky and inaccurate - especially compared to what we're now used to with google maps - you only use it when you really must.

Re:Voice control

[Moridineas]

I think the iPhone bing / google apps do?

THe builtin voice control definitely does NOT do that. With builtin OS voice control you can dial from address book, dial by number, play songs (by artist, etc), maybe some other things I'm forgetting, but that's all I ever use.

Re:Voice control

[h4rr4r]

It will send an email and take dictation for that email?

Because that is what this does.

Re:Voice control

[R3d M3rcury]

While there are iPhone apps for doing voice search, they aren't integrated into the voice search on the iPhone.

Assuming that it works similarly to speech recognition on the Mac, it recognizes a fixed list of words which can be followed by other words which can be followed by other words and so on.

So, for example, the iPhone could hear "Find" and know that it needs to do a google search. It could hear "nearest" after find and know that it should only get map information from the Google search. "Gas Station" would be something it couldn't cope with, unfortunately, unless it was in a humongous list along side "airport", "Best Buy", "campground", "DMV", "emergency room", "family planning clinic", "Honda dealer", "internet cafe", "jenny craig", "KFC", "mosque", "Office Depot", "police station", "restaurant", "subway", "tennis court", "unemployment office", "White Castle", and "YMCA." That's a bit much for a phone to handle.

Re:Voice control

[h4rr4r]

Maybe a bit much for an iPhone, but my droid handles it fine. "Map of Gas Station" and it shows me the nearest one. "Navigate to Gas Station" gets me directions there.

Re:Voice control

[ShakaUVM]

>>How much voice control? "Find nearest gas station"

Given how terrible voice recognition is, I wouldn't want to rely on it for voice navigation anyway.

Re:Voice control

[Wraithlyn]

I've had some success with my iPhone doing voice searches, like "chinese restaurants", and it pulls up Google Maps with local results pinned.

Of course, I am using the Google App for that. ;)

Re:Voice control

[Anonamused Cow-herd]

You can already do that -- and have been able to since the Motorola Droid launched last November. It's awesome, actually. If you're in the car dock, you just say "map gas stations" and it shows gas stations near where you are. "Navigate to nearest gas station" does exactly that. The droid + car dock is the coolest gadget ever; I had it streaming high-quality internet radio, navigating me to my destination, finding stuff I wanted nearby, and delivering my e-mail -- all at the same time.

Oh, and it worked great as a phone, too. Sadly, my work will only pay for BlackBerries.

Re:Voice control

[h4rr4r]

So get a provide that uses sim cards and swap them at the end of the day. Odds are activesync is enabled on your mail server, so you even still get emails.

Re:Voice control

[R3d M3rcury]

Well, what your droid does is send the audio off to Google's servers to interpret it. So if you said, "Navigate to Fred Smith's House" (because Fred Smith is in your local contacts list, including his address) would it give you directions to his house or would it try to find an appropriate "Fred Smith" in a google search?

Re:Voice control

[mjwx]

How much voice control? "Find nearest gas station" sounds like a handy thing to do, without trying to peck away at a (virtual) keyboard while driving. (We'll assume the driver is using a dash mount). Does the iPhone do this? Maybe it does, I wouldn't know.

On the Iphone it's all for American accents. search for "G'day mate" on an Iphone and you'll get "gay playmate", well I suppose they understand their target audience.

Google voice search was worse back in the 1.5 days, basically you had to have the same accent as a Google engineer. It's improved a lot in the 2.0 and 2.1 days and seems to handle my Australian accent OK although it just cant search for some suburbs, Applecross is fine, Nollamara give it some trouble but dont even thing of searching for Toodyay or Paraburdoo.

Re:Voice control

[h4rr4r]

No it sends just a hash of the audio, same way search works on the google map app. That last feature would be really neat, does the iphone do that?

Currently it just looks for "Fred smith" in the map.

Re:Voice control

[Moridineas]

While there are iPhone apps for doing voice search, they aren't integrated into the voice search on the iPhone.

Isn't that what I said?

Re:Voice control

[Degrees]

I've used "Navigate to (name of store or gas station brand)" many times (probably more than a hundred, and I'm no road warrior). It is amazingly good at this three word task. Speaking home addresses is less successful, but that is partly because your average street address in another city is six terms, and pauses in speaking are interpreted as a 'finished' signal. With a person over the phone, the practice is to pause after the street, so the person digests it before you move on to the town. The machine wants to get on with it, and does.

Re:Voice control

[delinear]

Why not? It's not like voice navigation negates the ability to type an address if it doesn't recognise what you've said. Even if it only works 50% of the time it's still going to be a massive time saver. In practice I use this with my sat nav all the time and it's surprisingly accurate, even when driving at speed on a noisy motorway.

Re:Voice control

[CompMD]

"My Garmin 60 CS has the ability to search for "points of interest" (including gas stations). But searching is so clunky and inaccurate - especially compared to what we're now used to with google maps - you only use it when you really must."

Part of your problem is that you're using a 60cs for something its not primarily designed for. Try the voice command features on the (now discontinued) nuvi 850/855/880/885. You can use voice commands to do anything, and it works quite well.

Re:Voice control

[Anonymous Coward]

The voice search with the stock Nexus One ROM does this quite nicely - especially from the "Car Home" app:

Click Voice Search
    "Navigate to petrol station"
-> launches google nav app and lists nearby petrol (gas) stations as destinations to pick from

Definitely works for me :)

Re:Voice control

[Anonamused Cow-herd]

If my work is paying for a Verizon BlackBerry, then I can't very well change providers or swap sim cards. =(

WiFI Proxy?

[Anonymous Coward]

The new Android feature I would like is the ability to use a proxy while using WiFi. You know, this one.

'listen to Ace of Base'

[Anonymous Coward]

Will trigger a pop-up on you calendar that says - in effect - "It is no longer 1996."

Re: 'listen to Ace of Base'

[Megane]

...will cause a giant hand to materialize, slapping you in the face.

Re: 'listen to Ace of Base'

[larry bagina]

at least that will be an improvement over the giant black dick slapping you in the face.

Re: 'listen to Ace of Base'

[straponego]

No, it'll play Motörhead, which is what you should have said anyway, you big girl's blouse.

Re: 'listen to Ace of Base'

[straponego]

Really, /.? No UTF-8? WTF-8!

Re: 'listen to Ace of Base'

[Buggz]

TRWTF is slashdots incönsistent HTML support. No wait, TRWTF is calling HTML entities UTF-8.

Can it answer questions?

[R3d M3rcury]

Actions are nice, but so is the ability to ask questions.

On my iPhone, if I'm listening to my music, I can ask "What song is this?" and the phone will tell me the name of the song and the band playing it.

Re:Can it answer questions?

[thewils]

Or, if you are like most of the people I've seen with an iphone you could ask any of the twenty people sat near you. They'll probably tell you who it is too.

Re:Can it answer questions?

[ben_kelley]

And if any of those people also have an iphone, there's an app ....

Oh never mind

Re:Can it answer questions?

[Monoman]

The iPhone does that or an app like Shazam? Shazam is on both platforms.

Re:Can it answer questions?

[R3d M3rcury]

Nope. Let me try this again.

My iPhone has music stored on the phone. I start the iPod app and choose "Play." I can then ask the phone, "What song is this?" and it will tell me the name of the song and the band playing it. It isn't listening to the song and figuring it out, like Shazam does, because it already knows this information--it's playing the song. It doesn't show me the title or anything, it just replies: "Police State in the USA by Anti-Flag" (for example).

This is what I mean when I say "Can it answer questions?" Obviously, some questions may not lend themselves to textual answers. But something like, "How much battery life do I have left?" might be a useful thing to ask a phone sitting in a backpack...

Re:Can it answer questions?

[alexo]

Actions are nice, but so is the ability to ask questions.
On my iPhone, if I'm listening to my music, I can ask "What song is this?" and the phone will tell me the name of the song and the band playing it.

How about: "Computer, what is the nature of the universe?"

Re:Can it answer questions?

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL

Re:Can it answer questions?

[sorak]

But please don't signify the beginning of the conversation by swiping your finger across their nose. That just makes them angry.

Re:Can it answer questions?

[delinear]

Google's implementation allows you to open, write and send an email using voice commands, then use the same voice command software to do a web search or call a friend, a reasonably mature cross application voice recognition application. If I understand correctly, what your iPhone is doing isn't answering questions, it's just recognising a set command and reading back a string of text in response - it's trivial to do and the Android would be more than capable, however there are many music players for the device so whether anyone actually thought it a useful enough feature to incorporate into their player is another question.

Ahh, nothing beats the voice activation

[m2shariy]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FFRoYhTJQQ

Now, on to fixes

[Anomalyx]

While Google tends to be better than others at prioritizing fixes vs enhancements, they seem to not be doing as well here.
This achievement is certainly commendable, and congrats to Google on making an advanced voice command platform. But come on, I still can't set SMS or email reminders on my Google Calendar in the Calendar app! Or on the Google Calendar mobile site, for that matter!
Sorry for picking on Calendar, but that's one thing that bugs me, because I use it all the time and have to either get on a computer or fumble around on the desktop site on my phone if I want to set my reminders.
Oh yeah, battery life would be nice, too.

Re:Now, on to fixes

[rotide]

Actually, for all the good Google has done on Android, one of my biggest pet peeves is something so simple, yet they haven't fixed it yet.

Being able to move emails into folders through the mail app while using an exchange email server. This simple function basically neuters any real work email functionality. In their online tracker it is listed as a feature request and not a bug. Go figure.

Re:Now, on to fixes

[h4rr4r]

That is not a bug, just a new feature. A bug is when something is supposed to do one thing, but does not or does not do it well. A new feature is when you want something that has not been done so far to be implemented. Moving mail to folders is a good example.

Either way, Moxier, Roadsync and touchdown all support this.

Re:Now, on to fixes

[rotide]

We're going to have to agree to disagree, but I liken the missing "feature" to a word processor that can't display capital letters. It works without them, but making it support them isn't exactly a "feature", it's an expected function. Missing it would most certainly be called a bug.

Re:Now, on to fixes

[Anonymous Coward]

You can agree to disagree all you want, but when it comes down to it you are wrong. It's a new feature, not a bug. If it was half implemented and didn't work properly, that would be a bug. If its missing altogether, its a new feature addition.

Re:Now, on to fixes

[h4rr4r]

Then we will agree you are not a developer or QA tester or ever worked in anyway related to software development.

This isn't a new feature to Droid, it's an upgrade

[funkylovemonkey]

The droid operating system has had voice commands for a long time now, my Droid 1 came with them back in December when I bought it. It's even been featured in commercials before. What this is isn't so much as a new program as it is a polished expansion of what was already there. They added more commands and those voice commands can now interact with other apps more easily. The voice recognition also seems improved, but I could be wrong since it was never a feature I used very much. The widget was also updated slightly. Really this is just one of many updates that have come with the release of 2.2 and the Droid 2.

My Samsung Moment with Android 2.1 does this...

[WilliamGeorge]

With the search widget, which I assumed was built into Android itself, you can already do a myriad of similar tasks. I can call, pull up a contact, search, get directions, and more. I am *not* talking about Nuance, which Sprint also provides as their own app - I'm just talking about the generic search widget which takes either text or voice input. Is this new 'feature' just an improvement upon that, or is there some other nuance about the new service which I am missing?

Whoop freakin' Doo

[Itninja]

My Motorola Cliq (which I really like) seems to be forever stuck at 1.5 (thanks T-Mobile). So I doubt I will ever get to see/use these features.

Re:Whoop freakin' Doo

[blincoln]

My Motorola Cliq (which I really like) seems to be forever stuck at 1.5 (thanks T-Mobile).

As far as I know, it's not T-Mobile's fault. It's Google's for refusing to support hardware that's more than a week old.

Re:Whoop freakin' Doo

[h4rr4r]

There have been 2.1 Cliq roms for months at least if not longer. Should be 2.2 roms soon if not already.

Re:Whoop freakin' Doo

[h4rr4r]

No, it is motorola. My droid has 2.2 on it, the OTA will not come out for ages.

Re:Whoop freakin' Doo

[AuMatar]

Google doesn't make the hardware. It's the OEM who makes the Cliq's fault.

Re:Whoop freakin' Doo

[Itninja]

Yeah, I know about those. But I really need my phone to function at work. I am afraid if I were to root it and/or use the 'nonroot' method, I would wonk out my phone and be out of commission (literally) for several hours or days.

Already here for awhile

[sponga]

I could have sworn this has been on the platform forever.

I use the Cyanogenmod and I remember the Voice Dialer/Search have been on there since 1.6 and even 1.5.

I have on my G1 2.1 right now as we speak. This has been around forever or am I missing something from this article.

Re:Already here for awhile

[h4rr4r]

Yeah you did miss something. It now does a bunch more. I just had it send an email using only voice commands. Including the body of the email.

Re:Already here for awhile

[sponga]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGbYVvU0Z5s
I see they did at it for texting, I wish the summary would just have a link to the Youtube video as they describe everything in there. This is awesome because it truly means hands free, now I almost want to replace the camera button as a shortcut button for search as it would be convenient to get to everything. Some of the newer phones have a 'voice' button already built into the hardware interface.

But this is brilliant "Send text to bill burgs lets meet outside the....", I wonder how this will hold up in court as 'hands free' while texting. But officer I wasn't texting I was voice texting. I wonder how bluetooth handsets will integrate with these features.

Re:Already here for awhile

[h4rr4r]

If you install CM6 then use titanium backup to remove the built in Voice Search you can upgrade to this now.

Re:Already here for awhile

[sponga]

awesome tip, thanks; but I might hold off until they get apps2sd working on my poor weak G1
Do I just uninstall through Titanium Backup correct? No need to wipe date/delete the app through Titanium?

Link for anyone interested in CyanogenMod 6(2.2)
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=722801

Re:Already here for awhile

[h4rr4r]

If your going to wait you probably won't have to do anything. This will be part of the new Google Apps pack probably. But yeah just use it to uninstall nothing else. Then reboot, then go to market and install new version.

Re:Improving battery life would be a better strate

[Anonymous Coward]

While I congratulate Google on this achievement, I think Google and Android would be better served if there were better results when it comes to today's Android phones and battery life.

Just imagine what the the headline "Android phones can now maintain battery capacity at greater than 80% after an average day of use" would create.

The buzz and positive publicity with this kind of information would be priceless.

False dichotomy or thread drift?

Re:Improving battery life would be a better strate

[James Carnley]

A phone battery just has to last long enough to make it through a whole day of normal use, anything more would best be used to increase functionality or ease of use.

Most everyone will charge their battery overnight, resulting in a fresh start for a whole new day's worth of entertainment and productivity.

Re:Improving battery life would be a better strate

[MrHanky]

Even my X10 Mini can maintain battery life for 72 hours straight with limited use. Try turning off WLAN and Bluetooth when you don't use it, or change their power saving configuration, and turn down the brightness of your screen.

Re:This isn't a new feature to Droid, it's an upgr

[h4rr4r]

You could just update your droid and get this new feature. CM6 is quite nice.

For all those not running stock roms

[h4rr4r]

If you are running a non stock rom, you will need to use titanium backup or another tool to remove the stock voice search, then reboot and install this new one from the market.

Does this run locally or on Google's servers?

[joh]

Is Googles just trying to gather more data on their servers by beaming your voice to their servers which send commands back then? Or is this really running on your phone's hardware?

Re:Does this run locally or on Google's servers?

[h4rr4r]

It needs the 3g, turns the voice into some hash then does a lookup.

Re:Does this run locally or on Google's servers?

[joh]

It needs the 3g, turns the voice into some hash then does a lookup.

So Google sees what you're saying and stores it on their servers hanging off your Google account? The same with every page or map you send from Chrome to your phone? Yeah, this is the same then as with everything Google does here.

1) Throw people a nice sweet bait
2) Get their personal data
3) Profit!

I will start to consider Android as soon as Google starts to transfer and store all personal data encrypted, with no way to read it or to link it up with other personal data of mine, except those data points I want to have linked up. Right, and give me a way to browse ALL data that gets stored off my phone at Google and a way to delete it if I want to. This would be the very least that should be required from them.

Re:Does this run locally or on Google's servers?

[victorhooi]

heya,

Well, technically speaking, they're not required to do any of that, lol.

But I see your point.

The thing is, there's a tradeoff curve between "privacy" and "convenience". For many people, the convenience you get from using an Android phone, or any of Google's services is much better than any perceived privacy losses.

Personally, I'm a little amused by privacy advocates. I can understand why you wouldn't want a repressive government having data on who you associate with. I'm originally from Singapore after all...lol. The government there is famed for using anti-sedition laws to prevent gatherings of opposition, or just suing you into oblivion on falsified anti-defamation charges if they don't like you.

However, my local supermarket knowing what I buy? Pftt. Or Google knowing what I search for, or how many times I called my mother or bestfriend? Hardly that interesting, seriously.

Most people have incredibly, pathetically mundane lives and an over-inflated sense of how important they are - myself included. Seriously, we're not that interesting. As a data point, in an overall trend, we're probably useful to companies.

But as some anonymous person over the internet. Get real. There's six billion of us. That's 1000 million, ok. If you're going to get stalked, or have your privacy invaded, or your FB account cracked into, it's probably going to be somebody you know - your annoying younger sister, your ex, your co-worker having a laugh etc. (I'm exluding people who fall for phishing/spam attacks here - and they're really only interested in your identity/money they dont' really care about what you did on your weekend.

Nobody cares =). So rest easy.

Cheers,
Victor

Re:Does this run locally or on Google's servers?

[joh]

Most people have incredibly, pathetically mundane lives and an over-inflated sense of how important they are - myself included. Seriously, we're not that interesting. As a data point, in an overall trend, we're probably useful to companies.

But as some anonymous person over the internet. Get real.

Yeah, there's very little to fear actually for the random individual, yet. It's the same as with some natives selling their lands to some foreign visitor for a handful of glass beads. What will he do, they think, take the land and carry it away? Want to have a few stones to go with it? lol, ha ha. Nice, shiny glassbeads! Give!

So, if you're using Android with all the Google apps there's some place deep in a server farm where more and better data about your digital life is laying nicely prepared for analyzing it than you've got yourself, probably. It also shows to whom you connect, what you're searching for and about two thirds of all websites you visit. And all you've got from Google is "We're not evil!".

With Google gathering more and more data from you they're also preparing a really nice monopoly. You can switch to any OS and device you like, as long as it has software supported by Google for their services. And of course right now they want to redefine net neutrality to keep the "Internet" neutral, except "additional services" (== Google apps) and the wireless net of course. -- "All these worlds, including your own, are ours, except these dusty moons of Mars, you can have those"

And then: This is incredibly useful data also for governments. Knowledge is power and what Google piles up here is lots and lots of knowledge. I mean, your voice profile is *valuable* personal digital property. Your personal data is your land you live on in the dimension of intellectual property. Don't give it away for glass beads.

Whatever. There can't be any harm in requiring Google to adhere to some clear rules (like letting you browse all the data they have from you, giving you full control over deletions, offer complete export options with common data formats and so on). Is this unreasonable?

Mind you, I'm not saying what Google does should not be done. It's just progress, it's fascinating and it has as great a potential to change the world as the wheel or written language did. I just want to keep control over my part in it. It's mine after all.

Re:Does this run locally or on Google's servers?

[R3d M3rcury]

...and pretty soon, Google will have enough samples of your voice to be able to impersonate you to security systems!

Re:Does this run locally or on Google's servers?

[praecantator]

You don't need to use all the Google stuff in Android. Just root it and put on CyanogenMod -- they strip out all the Google apps by default so you have to actually add'em in if you want it.

Re:Does this run locally or on Google's servers?

[internettoughguy]

Privacy is only important when you need it:
example (A) I'm searching what films are on at the local cinema, and order some tickets, I use the voice search feature on my phone and Google or Apple or Microsoft now know what genre of films I enjoy, and I don't care.
example (B) I'm networking with some colleagues from an anarcho-terrorist group to arrange some bomb making classes, I use freenet set on its most secure mode, and nobody knows that I am interested in explosives.

As long as we are reasonably careful with what information could be of consequence to us and what is just noise, there's no reason to be worried about giving away the noise.

Re:Does this run locally or on Google's servers?

[SnowZero]

There can't be any harm in requiring Google to adhere to some clear rules (like letting you browse all the data they have from you, giving you full control over deletions, offer complete export options with common data formats and so on).

Most of the data Google has on you that is indexed by your account is already available on the Google dashboard:
    https://www.google.com/dashboard/
Some products are not yet supported (listed at the bottom). The Google Data Liberation Front is working toward making it complete:
    http://www.dataliberation.org/
They are also working on safe methods of deletion (note that making this too easy allows account hijackers to hold data for ransom).

Note that there are also google ad preferences which allow you to see and edit what the Google ad system thinks about you:
    http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/

Re:Does this run locally or on Google's servers?

[asnelt]

Maybe Google has outsourced the voice recognition to India so that it is really some Indian guy in a voice recognition center who is processing your voice. Might be less expensive than developing a reliable machine voice recognition. Note that I am not serious.

Re:Does this run locally or on Google's servers?

[oergiR]

You may not realise that speech recognisers need training data. And there is no data like more data. A year ago someone from Google told me that they trained their recogniser on 1000 hours of voice searches. If every utterance is a couple of seconds long, that's a lot of recordings. When you do a voice search, you can select from a number of recognition hypotheses. This is how they get transcribed data.

They also need to train on your voice specifically before you get decent recognition performance. I found that after a while my phone became surprisingly good at decoding my speech. I do agree the privacy aspect is a concern, but in this case at least you benefit personally from Google storing your data.

Re:Improving battery life would be a better strate

[freedumb2000]

At least on Android 1.6 on my HTC Magic what sucks the most battery is scrolling! Yes, the normal finger swipe you do in about every application of the phone. Try installing a task viewer and watch the cpu cycles jump up to 80% for the simple act of moving around the screen. Either it's just my phone or there is something highly un-optimized in Android.

Re:Improving battery life would be a better strate

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure what you are doing wrong, but I can last a few days on a single battery charge with my Nexus One.

Re:Improving battery life would be a better strate

[hedwards]

Um, my Nexus One has perfectly fine battery life. Admittedly it isn't as good as my old Razr, but I don't have to plug it in every day unless I'm really using it a lot. Which is to be expected, really.

That's great but...

[Simulant]

...my 6 month old phone will apparently never get 2.2. (Samsung Moment/Sprint)

This is exactly what I was expecting to avoid with an android based phone. Silly me.
Not only does it suck to to have to renew my 2 year contract & shell out a few hundred bucks every 6 months to get a phone that has up-to-date software... it's just fucking wasteful.

Yeah, I know... Sprint sucks. As do they all, in one way or another.

Re:That's great but...

[h4rr4r]

Next time buy a phone cyanogen or another modder group supports. The retailer nor manufacturer want to bother updating phones.

Re:That's great but...

[Simulant]

Yeah... that's good advice except that you still need to lag the cutting edge by a good 6 months to a year to figure out which phones are going to have the best support.

Also... some of us can't afford to switch carriers to get a certain model phone.

Re:That's great but...

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Keep in mind that you may lose some stability using cyanogen instead of the manufacturer's version. Not to mention you have to acquire the Google apps separately (usually hosted on a friendly server). I've rooted my phone and am playing with CM6RC2. Even though it's bleeding edge, I am having better results than CM 5.0.8. Neither version is as stable as the Donut 1.6 that T-Mobile provided.

I'd always take a manufacturer's actively updated firmware over a DIY Cyanmod version. I'd just finally got tired of waiting on T-Mobile and took the plunge.

Looks like we have to choose between "Direct manufacturer support and stability (iPhone)" and "freedom of applications (Android)".

Re:That's great but...

[h4rr4r]

Not at all, some phones are supported out of the gate.

Re:That's great but...

[h4rr4r]

I have had no problems, lucky I guess. If anything the random in pocket reboots went away on my droid. It was happening when I left it screen towards skin and bent over which pressed the top button.

With ROM manager, it handles getting everything for you, no need to get the google apps or do anything yourself. Premium version is like $4 and even does updates when they come out.

Re:That's great but...

[Bill_the_Engineer]

I noticed that the CM6RC2 had an old version of ROM manager. Did you install the new ROM manager and allow it to perform the upgrade to CM6?

Re:That's great but...

[h4rr4r]

I installed ROM manager long ago, I updated after CM6RC2 installed if this is what you are asking.

Re:That's great but...

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Yea that is what I meant. I tried to do the same but Android Market always stall at 34% when downloading the update. I'll have to debug it with ADB this weekend.

Re:Improving battery life would be a better strate

[element-o.p.]

I'd be happy with 50% charge after an average workday of use...

Re:Improving battery life would be a better strate

[MrHanky]

I replaced my home screen after reading that some people experienced better battery life. Used ADW.Launcher for some time, and now Zeam. (Yes, iPhone users, you can replace the whole "desktop" without rooting or even allowing apps from outside the market.) I have no idea whether it actually helped, but at least the UI is a bit more flexible now. And yes, I get several days of light use, and at least a whole one with playing games and watching Futurama.

Re:Improving battery life would be a better strate

[kaiser423]

I find that Android quite aggressively re-computes battery drain values, or has a bug somewhere in it's battery routines.

For a while there, I was getting home in the evenings with 40% battery life, so I started charging it at work for a bit everyday, and my battery life went to absolute crap! What's wrong with it I said?!?!

So, the next couple of days I left it run all the way down until Android decided to turn the phone off to protect the battery.

Exact same usage patterns now and I end the day with 70% or more battery life. The OS just needed to remember what a fully drained battery looked like. It took probably 4 full drains before the OS re-calculated what a fully drained battery looked like, and now it's like butter. Tons of battery life.

FWIW, Sapphire 1.0, 250-1000MHz low voltage kernel w/ Incognito theme, no live wallpaper. Weather, twitter and facebook widgets updating every 10 minutes. A gmail and an exchange account and calendars for syncing also.

Re:Improving battery life would be a better strate

[TrancePhreak]

Scrolling causes redraw. This is true of just about any application.

Re:Improving battery life would be a better strate

[Belial6]

I noticed a recent improvement in battery life on my Nexus One. I wonder if that is the reason...

HTML5 Audio

[Samulus Maximus]

Too bad the default browser doesn't support the HTML5 audio tag :-( That's how I stream my music to my other stuff.

Not as meaningful as you think

[Anonymous Coward]

Android updates won't mean as much as most of you think, until Google goes to bat for the consumer versus the telcos currently hobbling the platform with bloatware, malware, and old OS versions. The Nexus One was certainly buried fast enough to satisfy even the crankiest telco CEO.

Re:Not as meaningful as you think

[h4rr4r]

You can still buy them, costs $25 to become a dev though. That or just get any phone with an unlocked bootloader or supported by modders.

Re:Not as meaningful as you think

[Anonymous Coward]

You're thinking like a geek. Think like a mainstream consumer.

Re:Not as meaningful as you think

[h4rr4r]

Why? I really do not care about the mainstream consumer. I am a geek and I will always think and act like one.

Would be interesting if Android was actually open

[cstec]

After shopping Android tablets hard for the last few days, the reality is there are lots of potentially great Android devices - that can't have apps. They can't because the "open" OS Android won't let you access Marketplace without ponying up to Google. (Let alone use Google's apps.) Net result is you get a device that's crippled compared to even a base Linux distro.

Yet /. invariably front pages what they do, because they successfully pitched Android as 'open' while keeping core functionality (the app market!) closed and /. fell for it. This reflects badly on /. as much as Google - if you're going to rip on proprietary OS's, you better crap on Android too.

TFA reads "Google introduced the next generation of interaction with its Android operating system". Well that needs to be clarified. Are these new features available for Android, the open OS available all over now? Or is this just more for Google Android, the proprietary OS with a marketplace and PIM functionality? I'm guessing the latter.

Doesn't work yet.

[Timmmm]

I downloaded it. It still only has the old actions (Navigate To, Map Of, Call). None of the new ones work (Listen to, send text to, note to self, etc.), even if it recognises what you say correctly. :-(

Re:Would be interesting if Android was actually op

[bobstreo]

Wait for the "REAL" android tablets. I'm guessing Q4 The Dell Streak is as close to decent
(Well it's only 5 inches, and it will be shipping with 1.6 and it's AT&T only even if you pay full price, no
unlocked models) as there is at the moment.

The tablets you refer to are not even licensed by google, which means no market. Android 1.7? WTF

Also all the ones at Kmart and DealExtreme have resistive screens.

The price point of 150 is kinda nice if you want a throw-away ebook reader/browser...

Re:Improving battery life would be a better strate

[gertam]

My Nexus One has much better battery life than my G1 did. In fact, I have no complaints about the Nexus battery life, while the G1 had trouble lasting all day. Y'all shoulda got an N1 while you had the chance.

Re:Would be interesting if Android was actually op

[cstec]

The tablets you refer to are not even licensed by google, which means no market.

Licensed by Google? That IS my point. What definition of 'open' involves getting a license to access core functionality? Where would Linux be if people had to line up to get licenses from Linus? Or you had to get a contract to use Arduino for each microcontroller project?

The point isn't that Android is bad, or whether there's a tablet build, but simply that it's not really open. So these 'new features' may or may not be new Android features - they may only be for Google licensees. There's Android, and there's Google blessed/sold/controlled/owned Android. They're not the same - one is a subset. If this feature isn't available to all Android devices, it should be indicated in the title, just like Mac and Windows-only apps are identified accordingly.

um....

[smash]

iOS has already done much of this for at least 1 year?

Re:um....

[h4rr4r]

Only the part android already did.
This is more about the text to speech text messages, emails and newer stuff like that. Heck, your "Find gas station" is done by a google app, not iPhoneOS. IOS is made by cisco and runs on switches and routers.

Re:um....

[Silas is back]

I know you love your iOS/IOS joke probably as much as I like the MAC/Mac joke, but hey, this kid actually got the spelling right!

Not partisan

[manekineko2]

Nope, it's not really partisan like that. It's more like the lack of basic features that have been simply taken for granted on competitors for years or even over a decade is lame.

The iPhone was rightfully criticized for its lack of multitasking, or copy and paste, or 3G. Just like Android was rightfully criticized for its lack of voicedialing with Bluetooth.

what gives?

[WiglyWorm]

I've had this on my motor Droid since I got it... I love it, but why is it news?

Re:what gives?

[h4rr4r]

Because your wrong. I have the same phone and yesterday it did not take messages by voice, it did not have half these features.

If your not running 2.2 you don't even have this available to you.

Re:Would be interesting if Android was actually op

[h4rr4r]

The OS is open source, that is it. The market is not core functionality of the OS, you can make your own damn market. You have to get a license from redhat to use their repositories. Same fucking thing.

Heck you can even get the apk and install it on your device that lacks the market.

Re:Would be interesting if Android was actually op

[h4rr4r]

The OS is about as open as it gets. Apache licensed, what more do you want?

The Market has nothing to do with that, it is just a repository. You could always install the apks without the market if you wanted. You can even just not use the market, or install alternative markets.

And...

[hackus]

It seems to have prompted a response from Oracle, which is too sue Google over infringements in the Java platform.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/08/12/financial/f164801D40.DTL

Good Heavens to Mergatroid...!!!

-Hack

Re:Improving battery life would be a better strate

[Stan Vassilev]

Just imagine what the the headline "Android phones can now maintain battery capacity at greater than 80% after an average day of use" would create.

The handset design might have to change a little to accomodate the bigger batteries, but it seems perfectly doable.

solution

[zogger]

The solution is there, people don't want it (well, I would but I am a blue collar guy and tiny differences in weight mean zilch to me..intown hipsters want teeny airweight and nothing else it seems). It's called a bigger battery. We used to have ten lb laptops, people still lugged them around. Now they want three lb laptops, or these things in your pocket, one ounce or something negligible. These phone batts just don't weigh that much, they could make them twice as large, it would still fit in your pocket and wouldn't weigh much. People won't buy them. You have to go after-market for the solution.

  I know on my phone you *can* get a much larger battery, but it then needs a battery cover replacement that is larger, the sum total equals another similar phone (just a feature phone is all I have) in price, or close enough to not matter.

We have had significant battery breakthroughs, nicad to nimh to now lithium whatevers, but they also reduced the size and weight at the same time, so runtime is not getting any better. If they kept the old larger and heavier sizes, just with lithium tech, you could have outstanding battery runtime..now try to sell them when your competitor pushes how light and thin his are.

Maybe it is a niche market that could be tapped, big phones with beefy big batteries and actual useful screen sizes, etc, but no major brand is trying it that I am aware of. I carry mine in a holster anyway, so even twice as big and heavy would still be lightweight, certainly lighter than the cellphones or walkie talkies of some years past that we managed to struggle by with.

Re:solution

[macson_g]

Sometimes I wish /. had this feature: 'translate non-metric-english-post to sane-units-using post'. I think this is doable with some neat google api.

Re:solution

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're having difficulty understanding the concept of ten pound versus three pound, look at a typical laptop today and imagine it weighing just over three times as much. It's really not that difficult to understand what GP's saying, even if he'd used a completely invented metric you could still figure out that he's saying laptops now weight three times less.

Re:solution

[macson_g]

I have difficulty understanding concept of X pounds against Y ounces.

Re:solution

[darthdavid]

1 pound = 16 ounces

Metric is easier for sure but, in the future, if you weren't (mis)fortunate enough to grow up in a country that uses standard (hah! that's a joke) google (or just about any other major search engine for that) will do unit conversions automatically from any reasonable phrasing (or give you the ratio so you can work it out yourself if you'd prefer that track).

Re:solution

[Pamplona Slowpoke]

Whoosh

Re:Improving battery life would be a better strate

[mjwx]

Just imagine what the the headline "Android phones can now maintain battery capacity at greater than 80% after an average day of use" would create.

So you want Google to design a new screen, processor and GSM transmitter that automatically uses less power?

I haven't yet met a smart phone with significantly better battery life then an Android phone, this is due to the hardware not the software. They all last about a day, on my Moto Milestone (GSM Droid) I can easily get a charge at 6 PM Friday to last until 6 PM Sunday, the only reason I cant do this on the weekdays is that I work on the edge of a 3G cell, so I'm constantly swapping between 3G and 2G (which takes up power). The Iphone 3GS and 4 have terrible life compared to the Milestone, I never see them very far away from their chargers where as I only charge mine once every 24 hours.

But the 2.2 update was about making Android faster, battery saving magic is probably in the next release.

Re:Improving battery life would be a better strate

[Anonymous Coward]

My Motorola Cliq's battery life is great ever since I loaded the Apndroid App, and "turn off" 3G if I'm not explicitly using something that requires internet. All of the constant attempting to sync my Facebook (which I'm not even *ON*) , Twitter (which I'm not even *ON*), Myspace (which I'm not even *ON*), and other accounts REALLY sucked the battery down. Ever since I used Apndroid to disable those, I love it!

Voice response? OK, I will ask it

[Anonymous Coward]

where is Froyo for my Droid!?!!??!!!

It's good news

[hhawk]

Breaking it down.. I love the phone as it is, adding voice services is great, I am not sure I will use them. I can already dial via phone from my car. But it's certainly something I'll download and try running..

Re:Improving battery life would be a better strate

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm running an NTT Docomo HT03-A (HTC Magic) with Cyanogenmod Froyo 2.2. My battery life with SetCPU scaled back down to 115Mhz when idle is AMAZING. My phone sits in the car all day when I'm working (Can't bring phone into my secure work center) and from 7AM @ full charge to 4:30 PM my phone drops from 100% allll the way down to 99%, even with the GPS, Bluetooth and 3G up and running all day. Rooting your phone and installing SetCPU, then configuring it to scale back the CPU when idle saves SOOO much battery power. And it's faster when you are actually using the phone also, mine is overclocked about 100Mhz. Cheers!

Re:Would be interesting if Android was actually op

[joh]

The OS is open source, that is it. The market is not core functionality of the OS, you can make your own damn market. You have to get a license from redhat to use their repositories. Same fucking thing.

Heck you can even get the apk and install it on your device that lacks the market.

The OS is Open Source, but people aren't using the OS, they're using apps on it and the Google apps not only aren't free, they also are actually just interfaces to Google services running on Google servers. You can't just implement alternative apps for that without still using Google services. It's a free OS with some important core apps not being free and interfacing totally unfree proprietary services running off a proprietary data collection.

For practical purposes Android as meant to be used and in fact used by most users is as proprietary as MS Windows and switching from Android/Google to another OS with another "cloud provider" is nearly impossible for most non-geeks once they're locked in.

Google is becoming the new Microsoft, Android is becoming the new Windows and Android will stick to our fingers with Google apps and services as Windows stuck to them with MS Office and proprietary file formats. That of all things Open Source and Linux enabled this is just that kind of ironic gem that history is studded with.

Re:Would be interesting if Android was actually op

[Moridin42]

The hell you can't implement alternative apps for those services not using Google. Its been done on a limited scale, replacing Yahoo services with Google's. If you wanted, you could replace it with services you hosted yourself on machines colo'd somewhere. But that not only isn't nearly as convenient, it isn't nearly as inexpensive.

Settings / About phone / Battery use

[Namarrgon]

Go to Settings / About phone / Battery use, and it'll show you exactly what's chewing up all your battery life.

One of Android's best features.

Re:Settings / About phone / Battery use

[bemymonkey]

The big question here being: How accurate is that display? How easy is it to tamper with?

Prime example: I'm using an HTC Desire right now. More or less the same phone as the Nexus One...

On the original HTC ROM, heavy display usage (high brightness, display on for over 70% of the entire discharge time), the display power usage is about 5-20%.

On Android Open Source Project ROMs (compiled directly from Android source - CyanogenMod, AFAIK, and OpenDesire up until 3.0.5), the display power usage is listed as being between 50% and 80%. On OpenDesire, this was flagged as a supposed bug, and since version 3.1.0 it displays the same minimal power usage as the HTC Sense ROMs.

Now for my conspiracy theory: The Desire and Nexus One were the first HTC smartphones with AMOLED displays. One of the marketing features was lower power consumption (complete bollocks, though - in real-world use you need to keep the display relatively dark to even match LCD power consumption: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2009/08/this-september-oled-no-longer-three-to-five-years-away.ars ... The article is a few years old, but I doubt they've improved/reduced the power consumption by 60-80% in this time), so they screwed with the display statistics to make it seem like the AMOLED display uses less power.

Of course, it's possible that it really was just a bug in the straight-from-source ROMs, but hey... my battery life with the screen running is far worse than on my old Milestone. I vote for conspiracy! :P

Re:Settings / About phone / Battery use

[Namarrgon]

Couldn't vouch for accuracy of course, but it's useful in any case for flagging higher-drain apps or components.

It is a percentage of course, so the relative proportion used by the screen will drop dramatically if you do something even more power-intensive on it, like make lots of calls, or play videos or games. On my Nexus One, the display is regularly 50-60% of power usage, which is not unexpected given that I read web pages and ebooks on it more than I make phone calls.

Re:Settings / About phone / Battery use

[bemymonkey]

So your power usage is pretty much in line with what the Desire Compiled-From-Source ROMs are saying. I smell funny business in HTC's Desire Sense-ROMs.

Re:Settings / About phone / Battery use

[Anonymous Coward]

Go to Settings / About phone / Battery use, and it'll show you exactly what's chewing up all your battery life.

One of Android's best features.

Well, mine says: "Display: 49%", and that is with brightness manually set to the minimum setting, it gets worse with auto-brightness. Phone in question is a Motorola "EuroDroid" i.e. Milestone, running the stock 2.1 Android as supplied by Motorola.

So while I know what's draining my battery, there's nothing I can do about it.

Re:Settings / About phone / Battery use

[Namarrgon]

All that might mean is that the rest of your phone is being relatively economical. Try playing videos for a few hours, and watch the Display % drop dramatically.

Re:Settings / About phone / Battery use

[IsoRashi]

Even better: go to the phone and type in *#*#4636#*#*

(Certain apps basically ripped out the code which presents this view.)

Re:Settings / About phone / Battery use

[Anonymous Coward]

All that might mean is that the rest of your phone is being relatively economical. Try playing videos for a few hours, and watch the Display % drop dramatically.

I would love to believe you, but I'm getting about 8 hours from a full charge, and I hardly use it for phone calls at all, most of it is e-mail (K-9, 4 IMAP accounts) and a bit of surfing and texting while I'm on the tram (approx. 30 minutes a day). This has been like that from day one, so it's not an issue of the battery degrading.

beauty of android

[Gerard Ketuma]

this is the beauty of android. the fact that features like these are built into the OS instead of having all these hardware manufacturer's doing something different for all the different phones. of course this is possible now since these carriers decided to open their mobile platforms. back in the day, verizon or att will not let you touch their market. now if only we can do the same on the tv set boxes and liberate them from concast, dish and directv.

Re:Improving battery life would be a better strate

[Rich0]

Well, my G1 is just about dead after work, and it is on the charger right before I walk into the office. This is on CM5 (I hear 6 is better - I'll switch once we have a release version that supports apps2sd (non-Froyo) or a reliable way of DIY for this that is likely to be stable across releases).

I don't use the phone much at all during the day - just leave it idling with bluetooth on, and wifi off. I'd toggle bluetooth, but it doesn't always come back on and it is a PITA.

Re:Would be interesting if Android was actually op

[Rich0]

So, you're basically just making the guy's point. Android does not have any voice command capability. Google makes one available for free to anybody who uses their Market App. It isn't available to anybody running Android.

Re:Improving battery life would be a better strate

[skyride]

Here in the UK, my HTC Hero seems to be able to run 48hrs without charge and light usage. Its about 10 months old and still going strong.

Re:Would be interesting if Android was actually op

[Rich0]

That's like making a fork of Ubuntu, but removing the package manager, and then calling it a great OS.

Android is a lousy OS - it has no package manager at all, full stop. It doesn't even boot on any real-world hardware that I'm aware of - just some emulator.

Now, there are some half-decent Android-based OSes out there which are pretty nice. However, they aren't open source - they're just Android derivatives with proprietary licenses.

See my point? When talking about what is nice about Android we don't talk about Android at all - but rather Android plus a bunch of proprietary extensions. That is, unless we talk about how open it is, and then we talk about Android itself, even though in that regard it isn't very functional.

Been there, done that, got the patent

[Paul Fernhout]

See: "The IBM Personal Speech Assistant"
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.10.6203&rep=rep1&type=pdf
"In this paper, we describe technology and experience with an experimental personal information manager, which interacts with the user primarily but not exclusively through speech recognition and synthesis. This device, which controls a client PDA, is known as the Personal Speech Assistant (PSA). The PSA contains complete speech recognition, speech synthesis and dialog management systems."

Seriously though, that was ten years ago on research hardware, and this is great progress for a commercial and affordable advice with a large vocabulary. It probably works better than what we built then. And I still think software patents are a bad idea. :-)
"Scalable low resource dialog manager"
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6513009.html

Now, if only someone would do in a big way an idea I was pioneering at IBM Research back then on using speech to interact with display walls built using a network of hundreds of otherwise obsolete laptop computers (I only tested using nine though). I hope Google comes out with that soon, too. :-) I wanted to create something like that to help design space habitats that could duplicate themselves from sunlight and asteroidal ore. :-) The idea was that speech would be a good interface modality when you were walking around in front of a display wall, rather than trying to carry a keyboard around with you (although you might still want a pointing device). Anyway, it would also be a good use for all those soon-to-be-obsolete iPads and Android pads in a few years when the next great version of them comes out. I just hate to see an old computer go to waste, even if they are often energy hogs relative to the next generation.

Re:Would be interesting if Android was actually op

[bigstrat2003]

Android has had voice command capability since 2.0. The day I bought my Droid, I could say "Call John Smith, mobile" and have it call (among other commands). This may make said commands more robust, but it certainly isn't adding something that wasn't there.

So much for music in your library

[eisonlyme]

Hmm so seemed great, been playing with it but it refuses to play music that is in my library and keeps launching last.fm which then just plays music 'like' what I asked for.. Also not too good at telling the difference between Muse and News..I will forgive it for that...still love my N1.. If anyone figures this whole playing music from the library thing let me know, would be real handy while driving.

Wow voice commands in 2010..

[Anonymous Coward]

This announcement takes me back to WM circa 2006. Seriously I'm happy reasonably stable bluetooth stack and basic features like voice commands are being implemented in Andriod but what the hell took soo long?

Re:Improving battery life would be a better strate

[Anonymous Coward]

So you want Google to design a new screen, processor and GSM transmitter that automatically uses less power?

My dumb phone goes about a week between charges with moderate use... as a phone. Why not have a cell/text-only processor and allow the other functions to go to sleep? Wake it when you need an mp3/video/nav/browser thing. I suspect somebody has got to be working on that. Remember, we have seen incredible increases in computing power but not incredible reductions in power consumption. In fact, it seems the limit is often at what is tolerable WRT device cooling and fan noise. Since battery tech is unlikely to follow the progress path of transistors, there ought to be a focus on having these little minicomputers operate on a standby-but-still-messenging mode. Perhaps I am mistaken - how long do these smart phones last on standby only?

Re:Improving battery life would be a better strate

[TornCityVenz]

I really don't understand all the complaints about battery life. I can count the number of times I've had my phone reach less that 25% power and I use the phone in addition to the web and mapping/gps functions nearly everyday. I do have a "cradle" that I drop it into when I get home, plugged into my computer to download files that also works as a charger. (this is for a day 2 Motorola Droid)

Hmm, old trick, new pony?

[Kalidor]

I'm not really sure I'd call this exclusive. I've had a program on my phone for years called voice commander.

I say "Call Cindy at work" and it dials her work number
I say "Dial five five five one two one two" and it calls 555-1212
I say "Launch TomTom" and it launches TomTom
"Play Kimi wa dare wo mamotte iru" .... you guessed it starts playing the full song that I sampled for my ringtone.

I suppose the fact that I can't command TomTom which address to find via voice is different. Granted I either have to hit my voice command/ppt reprogrammable button or the pickup button on my headset, but I think the android works very much the same way.

Program Link: http://www.cyberon.com.tw/pro-solAG1-1.php?NO1=1

Re:Hmm, old trick, new pony?

[Anonymous Coward]

And when Cindy doesn't pick up, can you say "Compose email, send to cindy@address.com, title: Tried calling, message: Hi Cindy, I tried calling about the TPS reports but I think you left for the day so here they are, attach: documents, pdf, tps reports, send" because Android could certainly already do everything else on your list before now.

Re:Improving battery life would be a better strate

[mjwx]

My dumb phone goes about a week between charges with moderate use... as a phone.

I normally dont answer AC's but...

Your consumer phone does not need to power a ARM v7 processor, 3.7" capacitive touch screen and maintain a semi-regular data connection. I used to have a Nokia 6500 Classic (still do, it's great for travelling), that thing went a week between charges because it had a 1.8" low power screen, now it lasts about 3 days because it's old (batteries degrade relatively quickly). A Nokia 6110 would use even less power, well because it requires even less power.

Why not have a cell/text-only processor and allow the other functions to go to sleep?

The majority of the functions in a modern smart phone do go to sleep but the power required just to idle the proc's and RAM required by smartphones is significantly greater than that of a consumer phone. But display is the killer, display will be taking up most of your battery and this thing does go to sleep after x number of seconds (or when I press the "main screen off" button). The only way you can effectively do what your are suggesting is to have another OS with another, weaker processor which will run whilst the main OS is shutdown as the main OS (Android, IOS) requires a powerful processor just to run. This will be costly, add to the weight of the phone and the display will still be a battery hog.

Perhaps I am mistaken - how long do these smart phones last on standby only?

Right now, I regularly get 48 Hours out of my Milestone on the weekends. If I turned off data, kicked it back to 2G (you said calls and messages only) I could probably double that amount but then again I wouldn't be using it at all as I rarely receive voice calls and have given up on SMS in favour of Gmail/Email (A$0.25 per SMS vs A$0.02 per MB and I can get a few emails out in 1 MB).

Art museums in Amsterdam

[SpaghettiPattern]

When you are in that special mood that bears fine, sensual and subliminal massages, you might be directed to this museum in Amsterdam.

Still no decent email

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news, Android still can't do email properly, just like most other smartphones.

Glad to see they've got their priorities sorted.

Re:Still no decent email

[Anonymous Coward]

"Let's base64 encode everything we send, and fail to generate correct references/in-reply-to headers to really humiliate our users in front of anyone with half a clue."

"Okay, but we'd better fail to display threads too, and top-quote by default if we're going to do a thorough job of pissing them off."

Re:Improving battery life would be a better strate

[BlackCreek]

The trick AFAIK is to run out of battery, and then leave the phone OFF and connected to a charger the whole night.

Android will gauge the battery stats when rebooting. If you reboot with an half empty battery, it may get confused. (XDA had some threads explaining this in detail)

Won't do the US any good

[FreeUser]

This feature is really part of the upgrade to the bluetooth stack me thinks. Up until now, there was no way to do voice dialing with Android phones.

Won't matter, now that that greedy fuck Ellison has decided to wipe out Android in America with his bogus software patent lawsuit based on, of all things, Java.

Time to dump that piece of shit technology (Java) in the trash heap where it belongs, along with Oracle.

Pity--I was going to buy an Android handset in the US in about a month...now I'll stick to the cheapest non-American handset I can get. That's another chunk of economic activity software patents has cost that ever less relevant country's economy.

Re:Would be interesting if Android was actually op

[Zebedeu]

It doesn't even boot on any real-world hardware that I'm aware of - just some emulator.

From this phrase alone one can tell you know nothing about what you're talking about.
http://www.androidx86.org/
http://www.android-x86.org/

But please, don't let me stop you.

Re:Oh gosh...

[ihatejobs]

Yea man, it was totally possible to tell my phone to navigate to the nearest gas station 10 years ago and it would tell me exactly where to go. Right... Obvious troll is obvious.

roughly

[zogger]

Old laptops, about 4 kilos, new laptops, about 1.5 kilos, but people want longer runtime with the batteries. The point was maybe we could get by with a laptop that weighed 2 kilos, still smaller than the older ones, with the extra weight being a big honking battery. Same sort of conversion with a portable communications device, the cellphone or radio. Back in the day, I carried a large 2 way radio for work. It was huge compared to today's cellphones. Maybe we could have larger cellphones that had better batteries, instead of the race to see how microscopic we can make phones.

If we managed to get by with those much larger devices back then, perhaps a compromise with the much smaller ones we have today, and offset it with larger batteries and bigger screens.

Is this clearer now? A hundred gram cellphone with so-so battery life, replace it with a 150 gram cellphone with twice as large of a battery, for much better runtime. Still falls into the small category. The old radios I used to carry weighed proly more than one kilo, or close to it, around there, and it needed a belt holster. We "got by" with that and didn't suffer hernias or anything.

As to what measurement is sane or not, meh, it is what I was raised with, same as you were raised with pure metric. I own a decent selection of mechanics tools, half are metric, half the stuff I work on is metric. I know the most common close enough to slide by things like grabbing a metric 13 is very similar to a half inch, might fit. I can get by with either, it doesn't bother me at all, just I was raised with standard so that's what I use in casual conversation.

Re:Would be interesting if Android was actually op

[h4rr4r]

Yes it is. Just go get the apks from the normal places or rip it off another device.

Re:Would be interesting if Android was actually op

[Rich0]

Ok, when you can host those on your website without getting a C&D I'll concede your point.

Re:Would be interesting if Android was actually op

[Rich0]

Great to see that - now where is the package manager? Oh, and v1.6 is outdated already.

My whole point is that Android is a second-class citizen - it gets code drops months after preferred vendors get it for proprietary derivatives of the OS, and it doesn't have half of the essential features. Projects like the one you linked are going to be second-class citizens.

Contrast that with Ubuntu - where anybody can basically run the same code as Mark Shuttleworth if they want from nightly builds, etc.

Don't get me wrong - it is better than nothing. However, it is far from a capable open source OS. It is an open source OS fragment, which lots of people tack proprietary extensions onto to make it functional.

And can we take it easy on the ad hominems? Nobody said anything nasty about you - perhaps there are some out there who might disagree and that alone doesn't imply that they don't know what they're talking about?

Re:Would be interesting if Android was actually op

[Rich0]

Just to confirm, is this part of android itself, and not a proprietary extension?

Unfortunately the AOSP website doesn't even contain a feature list (probably because Google doesn't intend that anybody actually use it like a product that you'd promote). That makes it a bit difficult to track down where this is implemented...

Re:Would be interesting if Android was actually op

[bigstrat2003]

To the best of my knowledge, yes. I can't say I'm 100% certain, but I am like 95% certain.

I would be happy if the phone App didn't crash

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, the quality of Android is sub-par. I have not been happy with my Droid from day one, and even less so as each new patch comes out. Seriously my phone App crashes at least 1 out of 5 times when I go to make a call. I can't use the camera as well as it crashes 2 out of 3 times. The phone reboots itself about twice daily. I have reset the phone and applied all the patches up to 2.1 update2 for Motoroloa, and still its a piece of crap. Maybe its just that Motorola can't make a good phone, I am not sure at what point Andriod vs Motorola takes over for app development, but overall I find Android is like buying the cheap store brand at Wal-mart rather then buying a quality name-brand at Macy's. It has all the basic features but just not very well polished and a lot of loose threads. Not saying it won't get better, but I am surprised Google is focused on adding more features without making the core of the product rock solid and stable.