Voice Control option(s) for 3G??

[ngenerator]

I've searched, and can't find anything about it...

I've heard that there are some apps, jailbroken or not, that will give a 3G voice controls much like the 3GS will have. This is the only feature interesting to me and will not be getting the new phone next week. Does anyone have any information on the name or the repository that an app like this would exist? Thanks in advance!

 

[ngenerator]

Dudes, seriously... Does anyone have any information on a Voice Control App on Cydia that rivals the gd 3gS? That's the one "update" I really care about...

 

[ViViDboarder]

Dudes, seriously... Does anyone have any information on a Voice Control App on Cydia that rivals the gd 3gS? That's the one "update" I really care about...

Yea, it's kinda stupid that the voice control isn't supposed to be a 3.0 feature but a 3Gs feature. It's obviously a software implementation! Also, they've already written it! Why not just allow it on the 3G? It's a feature that many phones already have and you finally implement it for you iPhone but then give it to only a handful of your customers... What?

Rather than a replacement on Cydia, I'd think it's more likely someone cracks the 3Gs version and just makes it work on the 3G. Same with tethering on AT&T.

I don't know why AT&T doesn't do what it does with all it's other phones and charge $30/mo to tether and I don't know why Apple wouldn't release Voice Control for the 3G.

And I was excited for 3.0 too... Oh well.

 

[ngenerator]

I swear I've read some posts about users who have this "option" on their phones, yet I still haven't figured anything out

 

[palmerc2]

I've searched, and can't find anything about it...

I've heard that there are some apps, jailbroken or not, that will give a 3G voice controls much like the 3GS will have. This is the only feature interesting to me and will not be getting the new phone next week. Does anyone have any information on the name or the repository that an app like this would exist? Thanks in advance!

I am hoping there are 2 things that can possibly be fixed with jailbreaking.

1. is to enable voice control on the 2G & 3G. as someone said, its software, not hardware - it should be available across all iPhones & iTouches

2. is to enable video recording on 2G & 3G. they both have the same camera. the only difference in the 3Gs is it has a better camera.

my hopes being, the dev team can bypass certain "blocks" when it comes to recording and video, and enable it - simple. done

 

[jman240]

The way i see it is as follows.

There are now 5 code branches for these devices, 3 iphone and 2 ipods. That means at least 5 distinct versions of the os since each device has slightly different hardware. Im assuming a lot of code is reused but it still has to be different hence the different restore files and the fact that you cant use one restore file on just any device.

Apple had limited time to produce this OS update as well as make it work on new hardware as per their release schedule and the WWDC keynote timing. The 3G is most definitely new hardware and differs greatly inside from the older iphones. This says to me that this is their flagship phone and thus Apple put forth the most effort into completing the software for it first.

I'm going somewhere with this. There are now obvious software differences between the different iphone generations and while some are hardware dependent, most are not. I'm referring to the battery percentage meter and voice control mostly. I really can't imagine that these upgrades wont eventually be added to the older iphones and maybe even the ipod touchs in a future update. It seems very silly that something as small as a battery meter would be left out.

I have a feeling most of these software features will be back ported eventually. They just weren't ready for some reason or another for the 3.0 software / 3GS hardware release schedule. (Also, granted the battery meter already exists for those with previous JB phones though we don't know if it is buggy or what the deal is there). I say wait it out for a 3.1 update and we'll probably see these features added around the same time ATT gets off their butts and turns on MMS.

 

[Revelation78]

Apple had limited time to produce this OS update as well as make it work on new hardware as per their release schedule and the WWDC keynote timing.

So you're basically saying here that you have no idea how development cycles work....

I can guarantee you that the 3GS and 3.0 were already in development when 2.0 was released.

Just like they are already working on the 4th gen model to be released next year.

 

[Icedog]

What is this battery meter feature you speak of? I must have missed that.

The way i see it is as follows.

There are now 5 code branches for these devices, 3 iphone and 2 ipods. That means at least 5 distinct versions of the os since each device has slightly different hardware. Im assuming a lot of code is reused but it still has to be different hence the different restore files and the fact that you cant use one restore file on just any device.

Apple had limited time to produce this OS update as well as make it work on new hardware as per their release schedule and the WWDC keynote timing. The 3G is most definitely new hardware and differs greatly inside from the older iphones. This says to me that this is their flagship phone and thus Apple put forth the most effort into completing the software for it first.

I'm going somewhere with this. There are now obvious software differences between the different iphone generations and while some are hardware dependent, most are not. I'm referring to the battery percentage meter and voice control mostly. I really can't imagine that these upgrades wont eventually be added to the older iphones and maybe even the ipod touchs in a future update. It seems very silly that something as small as a battery meter would be left out.

I have a feeling most of these software features will be back ported eventually. They just weren't ready for some reason or another for the 3.0 software / 3GS hardware release schedule. (Also, granted the battery meter already exists for those with previous JB phones though we don't know if it is buggy or what the deal is there). I say wait it out for a 3.1 update and we'll probably see these features added around the same time ATT gets off their butts and turns on MMS.

 

[mavis]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 3G (white): Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A341 Safari/528.16)

Don't you guys think it's possible that voice control + speech synthesis might be just a little bit hardware intensive?

 

[Ninja Dom]

Yes there are now, or soon will be, five different hardware platforms that 3.0 can run off.

But it isn't in Apple's interests to allow the iPhone 2G all the features of the iPhone 3G - or the iPhone 3G all the features of the iPhone 3GS.

Why buy a 3GS if the 3G does EXACTLY the same thing but is far cheaper??

Come September, Apple will release a new iPod Touch again (64 Gb capacity as Apple now has solo 32Gb storage chips used in the 3GS and the iPod Touch can take two of these.) But believe me, they'll add a few features that the 2nd gen Touch can't use or have.

 

[Maclver]

thats why apple does it right there!

 

[ruinfx]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 3G (white): Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A341 Safari/528.16)

Don't you guys think it's possible that voice control + speech synthesis might be just a little bit hardware intensive?

no

 

[mavis]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 3G (white): Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A341 Safari/528.16)

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 3G (white): Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A341 Safari/528.16)

Don't you guys think it's possible that voice control + speech synthesis might be just a little bit hardware intensive?

no

Right. Which is why so many phones support on-the-fly text-to-speech.

 

[coolwater]

What I want to know is if Voice Control does not include VoiceDial. AT&T is charging $4.99/mo for VoiceDial in iPhone package.

 

[StingerT125]

Come September, Apple will release a new iPod Touch again (64 Gb capacity as Apple now has solo 32Gb storage chips used in the 3GS and the iPod Touch can take two of these.) But believe me, they'll add a few features that the 2nd gen Touch can't use or have.

A camera with video capability would be a nice upgrade for the Touch.

 

[AzWildcat]

Voice Dial

feature from ATT is only for those whose phones don't support it (thats what a rep told me....although most of us here know far more about phone plans then most reps do....kinda like asking a sales clerk a question about a camera 9 times out of ten he will talk through his head)

 

[ruinfx]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 3G (white): Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A341 Safari/528.16)



Right. Which is why so many phones support on-the-fly text-to-speech.

voice control is a feature found on most smartphones, so no i dont think it requires fast hardware. the little ipod shuffle provides voiceover. all the iphone does is take the voice control and allows it to control voiceover. so no, i dont see any reason why the iphone 3g could have the voice control added to it other than to drive sales. while i understand why apple would want to do this, i think at least the voice dialing portion of voice control should be added to the iphone 3g for safety reasons.

 

[iMacDragon]

A camera with video capability would be a nice upgrade for the Touch.

Problem with adding a camera to touch is it would make new model unusable for some peoples jobs, where anything with a camera on is banned.

 

[iMacDragon]

voice control is a feature found on most smartphones, so no i dont think it requires fast hardware. the little ipod shuffle provides voiceover. all the iphone does is take the voice control and allows it to control voiceover. so no, i dont see any reason why the iphone 3g could have the voice control added to it other than to drive sales. while i understand why apple would want to do this, i think at least the voice dialing portion of voice control should be added to the iphone 3g for safety reasons.

I believe the shuffle/nano get the host system to pre record the sound samples, and the iphone will be generating them on the fly.

 

[ruinfx]

I believe the shuffle/nano get the host system to pre record the sound samples, and the iphone will be generating them on the fly.

i wasnt aware of that.

still, my old phone (the nokia e71) didnt have anywhere near the hardware specs of the 3G S has and it could still read my text messages back to me.

 

[jamesarm97]

the little ipod shuffle provides voiceover

I do believe that the ipod only does voiceover because iTunes takes each song and does the text-to-speech on the computer and tags the files with them. That is why they said that Windows ipod sounds different than the Mac ipod, because the computer is doing the text encoding.

 

[Gathomblipoob]

I am hoping there are 2 things that can possibly be fixed with jailbreaking.



2. is to enable video recording on 2G & 3G. they both have the same camera. the only difference in the 3Gs is it has a better camera. :

How can it be the same camera when the new one has more megapixels, auto-focus, auto white balance and auto exposure?

 

[mavis]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 3G (white): Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A341 Safari/528.16)

voice control is a feature found on most smartphones, so no i dont think it requires fast hardware. the little ipod shuffle provides voiceover. all the iphone does is take the voice control and allows it to control voiceover. so no, i dont see any reason why the iphone 3g could have the voice control added to it other than to drive sales. while i understand why apple would want to do this, i think at least the voice dialing portion of voice control should be added to the iphone 3g for safety reasons.

I believe the shuffle/nano get the host system to pre record the sound samples, and the iphone will be generating them on the fly.

Exactly. I think people are mistaking the iPhone 3GS' Voice Control for simple, 'dumb' voice dialing. It's not only being able understand a handful of commands, it's also being able to synthesize speech. The 3GS can read web pages to you, emails, etc - on-the-fly text-to-speech.

Not to mention the RAM issue. Voice Control seems to be running at all times as a background process, hence the reason it can be instantly summoned from within any app by holding the home button, without having to end the app in use. Given that the iPhone 3G typically has 2-3MB of RAM free at any given time (mail, Safari, iPod, phone - all of these use up lots of memory) I seriously doubt the iPhone 3G could handle an additional background task like Voice Control.

 

[ruinfx]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 3G (white): Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A341 Safari/528.16)



Exactly. I think people are mistaking the iPhone 3GS' Voice Control for simple, 'dumb' voice dialing. It's not only being able understand a handful of commands, it's also being able to synthesize speech. The 3GS can read web pages to you, emails, etc - on-the-fly text-to-speech.

Not to mention the RAM issue. Voice Control seems to be running at all times as a background process, hence the reason it can be instantly summoned from within any app by holding the home button, without having to end the app in use. Given that the iPhone 3G typically has 2-3MB of RAM free at any given time (mail, Safari, iPod, phone - all of these use up lots of memory) I seriously doubt the iPhone 3G could handle an additional background task like Voice Control.

like i mentioned, my old nokia e71 does on-the-fly text-to-speech. it will read your text messages to you.

 

[IronLogik]

like i mentioned, my old nokia e71 does on-the-fly text-to-speech. it will read your text messages to you.

You're missing the point. It's "Voice to Command" you're looking at versus
"Text to Speech."

Voice Control takes voice input from you, analyses it and turns it into a command. It actually has to process your voice and determine what is being said.

Text to speech is different. You have text, like me typing here, and you then render a voice to that.

Totally different mate. One controls the phone, the other simply reads things aloud.

Edit; and yes i realize the VoiceKit or whatever it is, can also render text to speech. But the point is the Voice Control APP is doing a lot more mathematical processing than one would initially think. Thus, a 3G only feature. The hardware required to do it is probably greater. Nevermind the constantly running in the background nature of it, and 128mb of ram already being tight on the 3G and 2G phones. Probably not possible to do it on the older models.