Nuance Dragon Dictation and Search is free for UK iPhone and iPad

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Posted on 23 Jul 2010 at 11:25

Is the iPhone's on-screen keyboard about to become redundant? It certainly looks that way, as two new speech recognition apps are about to appear on the UK App Store. Nuance's Dragon Dictation and Search apps have been available in the US for around eight months, but the latest versions will also be offered free to UK owners.

The Dictation app lets you speak normally, and transcribes your speech almost instantaneously. It can then be edited on a word-by-word basis (selecting alternatives from a drop-down list) and sent to the email app, pasted into a text message, copied to the clipboard or uploaded to Facebook and Twitter.

What's remarkable (other than that the app is free) is that it's incredibly accurate. Unlike speech recognition products we've tried before, this needs no training, and can recognise continuous speech with little to no mistakes. You can also include punctuation in your speech and it will be shown on screen just as you'd expect. The only catch is that you need to have WiFi or a phone signal for the recognition to work, as your speech is processed by Nuance's servers behind the scenes.

Unlike the original US version of the app, there's now the option to decline your contacts list being sent to Nuance. The reason for doing so is to improve the accuracy of name recognition. For example, without the list, the app couldn't recognise "Anand", instead transcribing "Anna".

The second app - Search - is very similar to the Google App in that it allows you to use your voice to search the web. However, there's a carousel at the top which lets you switch between results from Google, Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia and iTunes. As it uses the same recognition engine as Dictation, the results are excellent, and possibly slightly better than Google's voice recognition.

Both apps will work on the iPhone, iPad and the second-generation iPod Touch or later. They should go live on the App Store before the end of July.

Author: Jim Martin