Voice Actions & Chrome to Phone
Google Voice Actions is now available as a Voice Search update on Android Market.
I’ve tried it out on my HTC Desire (Froyo) and the actions that are available work quite well:
- navigate to [location/business name]
- directions to [location/business name]
- map of [location]
- call [business]
- call [contact]
The actions that don’t currently work by default on my HTC Desire include:
- send text to [contact] [message]
- listen to [artist/song/album]
- send email to [contact] [message]
- go to [website]
- note to self [note]
It appears that this lack of support is due to the language setting English (UK) - if you open voice search, click the device Menu button, click Settings and open the Language menu you can change the input language to English (Generic) and these other actions are enabled.
Although the voice search now detect the actions I speak, the set alarm action didn’t work:
“In order to use this feature download the latest Clock from the Android Market”
Clicking OK does nothing and clicking Go to website currently takes you a support page with the following message:
“The clock app update is currently unavailable. Our team is actively working on a solution so that the ‘set alarm’ voice action can be used. Thanks so much for your patience.”
Still, the other features work remarkably well. Although I haven’t been able to get the listen to action to play any songs on the SD card itself – instead it will resort to searching on Last.fm – it appears it only works for streaming music apps.
Google have also released updates for the Gesture search (you can now use a double flip movement to start to application) and an update to the Google search widget.
I’ve also noticed a new Chrome to Phone app which allows you to share links and text with your Android Froyo phone. I haven’t tried it in Chrome but I have tried a similar extension for Firefox which works perfectly.