Smartphone Thoughts: Plugged In with the Samsung i320 Smartphone

Figure 13: Voice Assist lacks the accuracy needed to be a reliable hands free dialing system.

One of the built-in applications is Voice Assist. You might be familiar with this from various Motorola based Smartphones. This is my first time using it and I have to admit that it looks promising but doesn't live up to its promise. I was attempting to demo this at a family gathering. I launched Voice Assist and waited for my queue and then slowly and clearly said "Call Mike Temporale" and VA quickly shot back with "Ready to dial work phone for Andrew Brown". How does Mike Temporale sound anything like Andrew Brown? I attempted this a number of times until everyone in the room had a good laugh. Then someone suggested that I try speaking in a British accent because VA was talking to me in a British accent. So I attempted it once more, and wouldn't you know it, the crazy thing worked! Now, I'm not that good with my British accent, but I get the impression that I'll get lots of practice if I keep trying to use this application. Just to show everyone how this works, I made a recording of me trying to use Voice Assist. Take a listen, and let me know your thoughts. Click here to download the audio clip.


Figure 14: Samsungs Launcher application provides a quick way to find and run your favourite application.

When you press and hold the Home key for a couple seconds, Samsung's Launcher application will start. This handy little application allows you to navigate programs, settings, via groupings. You simply press left or right on the navigation pad to move from one group to the next until you find the group you're looking for. Then you can move up and down the list of applications to select the one of your choice. You have full control over the what groups should be displayed, in what order they should be displayed and what programs should be in each grouping. It's a pretty cool little application. I wish that they had set this to run when the device starts. It seems to me that this would be a really nice interface for the average business user that just wants quick access to their applications and don't want to fiddle around with making or installing a custom home screen.