Comments on: Choice Dialer

By: John Manlow

John Manlow — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 09:38:30 +0000

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?

By: NP in Texas

NP in Texas — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 20:18:55 +0000

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.

By: Hector in PA

Hector in PA — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 11:40:10 +0000

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.

By: Steve Hendricks

Steve Hendricks — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 23:52:16 +0000

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.

By: Tony Lovell

Tony Lovell — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 16:14:39 +0000

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

By: snellcomp

snellcomp — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 13:07:45 +0000

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?