Choice Dialer

Posted Monday, January 11th, 2010 at 7:50 am by 6 Comments
Choice Dialer
1 Android Tapp2 Android Tapps3 Android Tapps4 Android Tapps5 Android Tapps User Rating2.73/5

Choice Dialer is a beefed-up Android Voice Dialer, adding the iPhone 3GS’s Voice Control commands for on-phone music play with speedy short cuts to schedule calendar events and call reminders as well as a little whimsy if you should ask, “What does a cow say?”

Price: Free

AndroidTapp.com Android App Review:

Pros & Cons

Pros

  • Really cool enhancement to the default Voice Dialer application by Google
  • Launch apps, schedule appointments, play music, and initiate phone calls by voice

Cons

  • Buggy on HTC Hero and Android 2.0+ phones

Features:

Choice Dialer Android App is Hot! It reminds me of my Windows Mobile days, I had this feature to speak commands to the phone. With Choice Dialer you can launch apps, schedule appointments, initiate phone calls, and play music by voice. There’s a separate plugin to support more control on music playback with voice for Android phones called Choice Dialer DJ. To use it, Longpress the phone’s answer button until Choice Dialer dialogue appears, then speak your command and confirm. You can even set it to confirm or not to confirm outgoing phone calls.

Choice Dialer lets you call, text and email contacts, play music and schedule calendar events and calls with simple spoken commands:

  • “Call Bob Jones at work”
  • “Schedule an event for Tuesday at 3 PM”
  • “Play music by the Beatles”
  • “Play the song ‘Yesterday’”
  • “Edit contact for Jane Smith”
  • “Remind me to call Sue Conley in 2 hours”
  • “Dial 617-492-5233″

Usefulness:

Choice Dialer can be very useful for initiating common tasks you would otherwise tapp a few screens to do. Great for making calls while driving with Bluetooth (reduces looking away from the road when you use it in combination with disabling phone call confirmations).

Ease of Use:

Speaking clearly and not loudly in a place with low background noise yields the best results.

How to set Choice Dialer as your Default Voice Dialer

  • When installed and you longpress the phone’s answer button, you’ll be prompted which app to use. To set Choice Dialer, check the box that says, “Use by default for this action” then select the app.

Frequently Used:

Most likely sparingly, but if used properly you would find yourself using it more often to save time with cool voice-enabled shortcuts.

AndroidTapp.com Rating

AndroidTapp.com Rating!AndroidTapp.com Rating!AndroidTapp.com Rating!AndroidTapp.com Rating!AndroidTapp.com Rating! (4.1 out of 5)

Should you Download Choice Dialer? Yes! Show it Off to your Friends or Use it for Convenience with Everyday Tasks!

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6 Responses to “Choice Dialer”

  1. snellcomp says:

    Installed Choice Dialer on my Eris two days ago, after OTA updates. Gets no more than 20% recognition rate on my requests, while Google voice search is in the 90% range. Why doesn’t the native dialer use the same set of ears the search has?

    • Hi, snellcomp.

      There are several possible reasons for this not working nicely for you.
      The first thing I would try is speaking further from the phone (12-18 inches), as some phones (CLIQ, most notably) have very hot microphones.

      I could also have you try a special diagnostic build that uploads the audio it records. This is how I found out how terrible the CLIQs were in their (unadjustible?) gain setting. I wonder if the Eris is in the same ballpark?

      Google voice may be using a higher sampling rate on the microphone or its superior performance may be most attributed to the vastly greater computing resources crunching the audio it receives.

      Please send me a feedback report from Choice Dialer’s feedback function (under Menu), providing an email address and citing your poor recognition. I will get back to you with quick instructions on how to get the diagnostic app.

      Tony

  2. Steve Hendricks says:

    Been using Choice Dialer for about a month. Overall it’s a vast improvement over the default voice dialer on the Droid. And the capability of playing music by artist or song title is a very nice feature.

    I’ve found, as the developer notes above, that it takes some practice to get optimal recognition. I found, for example, that I was speaking too loudly and too close to the microphone. Once I adjusted my behavior, the performance of the app improved noticeably.

    The apps ability to run other applications is rather hit or miss. Some applications provide a “hook” that Choice Dialer can use to launch an application; others don’t. This can be frustrating but there seems to be little the developer can do about it.

    Finally, the major competitor at present seems to be “Voice Dialer HF.” I use both. On the whole, I think Choice Dialer is quicker and its ability to play music gives it a significant advantage. On the other hand, VDHF is designed specifically to support completely “hands free” operation. If there are several alternatives HDHF goes through them verbally, requesting a “yes” or “no” to each. Choice Dialer, on the other hand, presents a picklist. There are advantages to each approach depending on the situation.

    All in all, Choice Dialer is an excellent app, imo. And the developer is extremely responsive to issues. Kudos.

  3. Hector in PA says:

    I’ve been using this since the new Froyo 2.2 allowed hands-free Bluetooth dialing. At first, the speech recognition was frustrating — so much so that I actually cursed at the darn phone while trying to place a call. Wife was very amused. The developer is very responsive to complaints and suggestions, and the latest update I received a couple of days ago is very good. The voice now asks a confirmation question before dialing thus pretty much eliminating a wrong contact. I don’t ask it to play music or anything else, so I can’t speak to those features but I feel it’s a bargain.

  4. I am missing my voice dial up. I just got the LG Optimus and it is not working for me. The wrong numbers are dialing. I miss the confirmation question the most. How do I get the update? I had to set up voice dial in my old one and then it confirmed. I like that a lot. My priority is to get it to dial accurately, not necessarily to play music.

  5. John Manlow says:

    Wont work atm with my platronics a2dp bluetooth headset on a Dell Streak, almost as though it cant find the microphone it says in an error message that the mike may be in use by another app, but how do you check that?

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