Cyberon Voice Commander (27/08/2004) | nedge2k.com | Have, Phone, App, Voice, Cvc

One of the coolest features left out of the HTC range of Smartphones up until recently was the ability to operate certain functions with your voice. Even the most basic phones on the market these days have the ability to voice dial but not MS Smartphones. This fact was generally accepted and the subject soon forgotten. Various companies came and went offering the ability to add this function but none really hit the spot. Now, however, comes a new contender, Cyberon.

For me, using my voice to operate my phone was always one of those things that was really cool for five minutes, nice thing to show off down the pub etc. not something that I would really bother using much and so it didn't really bother me that my Smartphone didn't have it. This all began to change after using Cyberon's new Voice Commander app. Not only is it cool for longer than five minutes and a great thing to show off down the pub but it is actually usable for everyday tasks. On some, lesser phones, dialling a phone number can be a lot of hassle but we in the Smartphone community are blessed with the nice T9 contact finder feature where all we have to do is type the first couple of letters of the person's name and hey presto, there they are. So for us voice dialling isn't necessity. CVC does more than that and what's more it does it well. With CVC you can:

-Call a contact at work / home / mobile
-Find a contact's details
-Manually dial a phone number (digit dial)
-Start an application
-Hear today's / tomorrow's / this week's appointments
-Hear unread Email / SMS
-Have a list of commands that you can use read out to you

An impressive list of features I'm sure you'll agree but what really got me about this program is the fact that you can just start using it instantly with no training whatsoever. I thought that I'd have to spend hours training it just so I could make a call! CVC, however, worked flawlessly first time'something that other voice apps have failed to deliver. Cyberon even make locale specific versions to aid this further. For reviewing this app I was sent both British and American versions! It has to be said though that the voices you interact with are a bit, well, Stephen Hawking-esque. The British version I used was a bit more human but the voice often changes over to the computerised one, something that Cyberon seem to have overlooked. The appointments feature could also do with some tweaking. While using CVC I noticed that it would not detect existing appointments, only those which had been made after the app was installed. The digit dial feature can also be buggy at times but this can be remedied by training CVC to recognise the numbers as you say them. I also didn't like the fact that only the phone's softkey's could be used to quick launch the app. I would have preferred to use the call key or one of the volume keys. My one final gripe and possibly the biggest, was the fact that you can't fully close the app due to a bug in the background process that CVC uses to monitor whether you are trying to start the app etc. Most of the time this wouldn't be a big deal as you need that process to start the app anyway so you wouldn't want to kill it but it's a big problem when you are trying to use Sprite Backup. Part of Sprite's backup procedure is to totally stop all apps, the only problem is that when you try and kill CVC's background process the phone freezes and you have to take the battery out to start it again. As a temporary fix I deleted the shortcut for the process in the startup folder, rebooted the phone so I could use Sprite and then put it back when I was finished. Another small oversight by Cyberon. However, the problems I have mentioned don't really make CVC any less usable or any less of a program. The program's speech recognition is still great and it's a very usable tool. Even more so with the new UK laws banning you from playing about with your phone whilst driving. With CVC, if you need to know what/when/where your next appointment is, shout at your phone! If you need to get a contact's details, shout at your phone! Want to hear an mp3? Put a link to it in your start menu and shout at your phone! SMS/Email comes in while you're in the car? Shout at the phone! It's great.

If I could add anything to this app it would be the ability to use it with a headset by pressing/holding the headset button. Probably not possible with a Bluetooth headset but definitely possible with a hard wired one. I'd also like to be able to answer a call with my voice and have the app read out some system status like battery etc.

For the $15 that Cyberon charge you really can't go wrong. This is a great app. I love that fact that you can just pick it up and use it, that it will tell me what and when my next appointment is, that it will read out my texts/emails and that I hardly have to repeat myself to it. If you, like me, are a lazy sod, this is right up your street or if you're in the car alot it's perfect. This really is 'An Intelligent Assistant!'

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