OK so I love car docks .. I bought a Google Nexus One and forked out for a custom Google car dock (shipped from Europe at no small expense). So now I have a Galaxy Nexus it was just a matter of time before I caved in and got a car dock. I found one discounted on MobiCity (parallel importer in Wellington) - not cheap but acceptable at the time.
So now it's arrive - time to unpack.
OK so straight up this is a nice looking car dock. Time to put my phone in .. OK it is a very very tight fit - will be interesting to see how it goes in the car ..it's a 2 handed operation. All in all look an feel and operation is so far a Rating: 4/5
Not having yet plugged it in (and in doing so triggering the bogo pins into action) I start looking to download the google car dock app .. oddly it't not available for 4.x .. hmmm. Once usb is connected to the dock however - bingo the base home screen goes landscape and the view is quite tidy .. so I might be fine as is. What is particularly nice is the voice activation icon on the bottom left.
Just by fooling I'm finding the voice activation is quite cool but my results to date are well below 50/50 however:
- CALL call
such as "call fred mobile" rarely if ever seems to work.. the more words you say the lest likely it is to succeed Rating: 1/5. Simplifying to call such as "call fred" can work well for simple names ... I don't hold out much hope that it'll replace typing / touch in the car but it can help to reduce typing by bringing up search results Rating: 2/5 - DRIVE drive
such as "drive home" works well for simple preset destinations - the integration here with google maps online is pretty awesome. That said if I ever try "drive Quay street Auckland" the best I get is "drive key street waltham" .. not likely to work at any level of acceptability .. possibly my accent - enunciation is very definitely important Rating: 3/5 (for the saved locations and maps integration) - LISTEN listen to
a-la "listen to the x x" .. so far only succeeds in starting my preferred music player (PowerAMP) with a failed search .. but a one touch from here to folders so Rating: 2/5. That said to be able to support 'start music' and 'stop music' simply activating/deactivating your preferred music player would be a 5/5 for me. How about "drive home" "start music " .. that would be cool. - SEND send text to
along the lines of "send text to matthew hello" .. this finally worked on about the fifth attempt after giving up on a couple of other names. Once I got it working I still needed to choose a matthew as I have a few in my contacts .. unlikely to use this with much success Rating: 0/5. Given sending a text was not super successful you can imagine how much success was in store for email .. send email quickly yields results .. but once you have a email editing dialogue .. well, good luck to you.
A complete list of valid actions can be found here http://www.google.co.nz/mobile/voice-actions/
Also note my voice settings are for 'English (UK)' and I have this downloaded to be able to work offline. Phone search is across People and Play Music.
