Android Voice Search gets personal with personalized voice recognition

By Phil Nickinson
published

Google Voice Search New

The old Voice Search options (left) and new options (right)

Voice search on Android is pretty good. And it's about to get better. Google's updated the app and given us the option for personalized recognition. The premise is simple: Voice Search remembers words that you search for (and the sound of your voice doing so) and associates them with your Google account. It's an opt-in service, so it's not automatically recording your voice without your knowledge. You'll get the option to turn on personalized recognition when you first fire up voice search. And from there on out, it's all transparent. The goal? To understand you better and make searches faster and more accurate.

The update and personalized recognition are only available on Android 2.2 and up, and for English in the U.S. Google says it plans on supporting other nations and languages in the future. You can update in the market, and we've got download links after the break. [Google Mobile Blog]

Phil Nickinson
Phil Nickinson
14 Comments
  • Does anyone know which clock apps are compatible with this?
  • Nice... now if only they'd add a "I've had a few drinks" option. :)
  • Looks like I am the only one interested in this hopefully it will be better than the old ways were you train it to your voice and it still does not work properly. I mean the technology these days are great but being able to tell from the different dialects is a overwhelming task in itself.
  • This is exciting and I hope it works. I have a Vibrant stuck on 2.1 so I cant try it yet.
  • ROFL about being drunk.
  • Does anyone know how to get this working in the UK?
  • You have to move to the U.S.
  • souds like they are trying to play catchup to vlingo....
  • Why does Google store this in your Google account and suffer the inevitable (if wrong headed) accusations of recording your every word. Unless of course it does store voice and would consume a lot of storage...
  • ok am I the only one who has problems with this voice search??? I had the droid 2, and now i have the incredible and it does the exact same thing. When ever I go to use the voice commands " send text to, play artist, send email to...etc" it does not do what i ask, for example I will say " send text to michelle....lets go to happy hour" it will pull up the message box and put " lets go to happy hr" in the message but the recipient field is blank.., ive done that with other names as well and it does the same thing. why is it not recognizing my contacts? Also ive tried to play my music on my phone so i will say " Play kanye west Blame game" it sends me to a google results found page for " play kanye west blame game" instead of opening my music player.... can anyone help me? is there some settings i need to do, or some sort of trick? because at first when I had my Droid 2 I thought maybe it was just that phone, but now with my Incredible its doing the EXACT same thing.. so it has t be something im either doing wrong, or not doing at all...thanks in advance
  • Don't use the command, "Play Artist." Use, "Listen To: (Artist/Song)."
  • Use Vlingo it works much better for text and it also will read your text and email...when you open the app it gives you a list of how to say the things you want. When you hit the search button you'll still have both choices.
  • Am I the only one who's not seeing the new options? I was really excited about this, but the menu looks exactly the same as it did before. I have a Desire from Sweden that I'm now using in the UK. I've tried setting the language to Default - English US, English US, English UK... to no avail.
  • @new That is what I am seeing too. Just did an update on my Galaxy S tot he latest version and it does not show those new options. I set the language to US English. That stopped it searching for everything rather than executing the command (good). But it is still too inaccurate to use. Something that can train the voice recognition would probably help. I am in New Zealand, so the new stuff might be only showing on US phones where, I suspect, it is least needed (!!??)