Nuance Dragon Mobile Assistant adds location sharing and hands-free texting

By Simon Sage  | Mar 12 2013 | 10:30 am  | 8 Comments

Nuance Dragon Mobile Assistant

Nuance has announced a handful of new features to their Dragon Mobile Assistant app, which launched just last fall. In addition to the usual stuff, like updating Facebook and Twitter, finding businesses, booking calendar appointments, and getting directions, Dragon Mobile Assistant can now share GPS coordinates with trusted contacts.

It can also read incoming text messages out loud and answer them without pressing a button. Finally, Dragon Mobile Assistant now politely reminds you when you have a conference call coming up and offers to dial you in. The downside is that the app is still only rolled out in a limited geography - sorry, Canadians. 

It's still tough competing with Google Now, but these new features certainly help Dragon Mobile Assistant stick out. Which features would you need from a third-party voice app to replace Google Now? How often do you use Android's built-in hands-free functions? 

Source: Nuance

 

Simon Sage

Simon Sage Editor-at-very-large

"Blogger, gamer, giant. "

527(articles)

7(forum posts)
 
There are 8 comments

svinyard says:

I use voice commands all of the time. For doing long searches to settle an argument with my Wife ("Who was the valet driver that shot so and so in that movie") and especially navigation stuff while driving. Also calling and texting people while driving.

Is this better than Google Now? I launch google now with a long press of my S3 home button (cm10.1) and it works pretty well. Calling people sometimes gets messed up though and at times the voice texting is screwy too (wasn't in the old voice searching though). Also it doesn't do a good job at naturally adding in Appointments.

Maybe this is better?

lordbah says:

Who wanted to share GPS coordinates? There are so many other features which would actually be valuable to me.

Speak aloud incoming gtalk messages and let me reply by voice.

Read incoming email. Subject and body, not headers, don't speak HTML markup, definitely let me interrupt.

"Read the last text from Karen." (wait, not the right one) "Read the text before that (or, 'previous')." ... "read back the last text I sent."

"When is my next dentist appointment?"

Even "Read Facebook/G+ feed".

Ability to do everything while on a call. Especially the ability to check calendar for a given date.

Hey, I recognize that some of these things are very difficult, but these are the kind of features I'd like.

glazedfaith says:

Seconded all these things

hamonclan says:

I am thinking that some of these feature would be nice.. But I am afraid of loosing google now. I like to be able to swipe up and have my google now cards... After I downloaded Dragon it appears that I have to chose to have dragon or Google now...

Am I missing something. thanks

yankeesusa says:

On samsung note 2 and on the s3 i believe you can have an app read your text. Just activate "driving mode". Although this app looks good google now is integrated into the phone which is a great feature. If I can use this is conjunction with google now I will use it. If it makes me choose one or the other then google now will win every time.

epps720 says:

I only use this when I'm driving and use Google now at all other times. The Dragon widget is an easy way to turn the app on and off with a touch. This thing is fantastic for hands free driving, especially texts. Other apps can read out texts but you can send a text with those without picking up the device. With this app you just say 'Hi Dragon', the phone wakes up automatically (even if you have a screen lock) and you can give directions to the phone, all hands free. Really is a great app. You can even reply to a text after you get one.

JimiMack says:

I downloaded this and gave it a try... 364mb after install why? While it was not a bad experience it left me wanting more. It does somethings well and somethings it does not do at all. I asked it to turn BT on and I was advised it was not able to do that at this time. A simple command like that should be there from the start. It seemed to have issues with calendar commands as well. I think it will get better but really 364mb that seems large for an app that does not do everything. There are plenty of "Assistant" apps that do more while using less resources.

return_0 says:

I prefer Maluuba. It has better voice recognition, gives more accurate answers, has a nicer interface, and takes up only 10 MB as opposed to half a gigabyte.