TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: A Phone That Takes Dictation: Testing Voice-to-Text Function

A Phone That Takes Dictation: Testing Voice-to-Text Function

Monty Solomon (monty@roscom.com)
Thu, 28 Apr 2005 22:24:53 -0400

A Phone That Takes Dictation: Testing Voice-to-Text Function

By WALTER S. MOSSBERG

Cellphone text messaging, long popular abroad, is finally catching on
in the U.S., especially among younger users. But cellphones are
notoriously frustrating to use for entering text.

If you're unfamiliar with using a numerical keypad to enter text
(lucky you), spelling out a simple word like "dance," for example,
would require pressing 3, 2, 66, 222, 33. Typing out full sentences
using this method is even more annoying, leading users to get creative
with abbreviations and short-spellings. "R u goin 2 b l8?" is
text-speak for "Are you going to be late?"

Phone makers have tried to solve this problem by squeezing little
keyboards into the bodies of some phones. But these keyboards usually
make phones bigger and bulkier than normal, and often show up only on
costlier models, like the Treo or BlackBerry.

This week, my assistant Katie Boehret and I tested a new phone that
attempts to solve the text-entry problem in a novel way that doesn't
involve typing, and can be used on a small, inexpensive phone with
just a numerical keypad. This new phone lets you dictate your text
messages by just speaking into the phone.

The Samsung p207, $79.99 with a two-year contract from Cingular
Wireless, has built-in "speech-to-text" technology: It turns what you
say into text on the screen. This technology, called VoiceMode, was
created by a small Massachusetts company called VoiceSignal
Technologies Inc. If it works properly, VoiceMode should make
composing a text message as simple as dictating a voice-mail message.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work very well. In our tests, the system
made so many errors requiring tedious corrections that it might have
been faster for us to peck out our messages the old-fashioned way --
especially if we used the abbreviations and shorthand phrases so
common among text-messaging fans.

http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/solution-20050427.html

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The Cingular Wireless lady here in
Indpendence also sells Erickkson phones in addition to Nokia. The
Erickkson phones she offers have a tiny little minature typewriter
like attachment which plugs on the bottom of the phone; it is
called a 'chat board'. Although it will (apparently) match up with
the Nokia 6100 series phone like I have, the 'pinout' does not quite
work the same way. It would be nice if it did, however. PAT]

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