15. Using Voice Services

In this chapter, you learn about controlling your Galaxy S5 using voice commands. Topics include the following:

Using and configuring S Voice

Using and configuring Google/Voice Search

The Galaxy S5 ships with a pair of competing voice-command apps: S Voice (a Samsung app) and Google/Voice Search. Both operate in a similar fashion, enabling you to speak English-like commands and queries to control the phone and its apps, perform Web searches, and find answers to your questions.

1. Launch S Voice by tapping Apps, S Voice or by double-tapping the Home key.

2. The S Voice screen appears. Say your first question or command. For example, you might ask, “What’s the weather like today?” to see the weather forecast for your city. S Voice displays the information it finds.

3. To ask S Voice the next question or give it a new command, tap the microphone button or say the wake-up phrase. (“Hi, Galaxy” is the default phrase.)

First, if you leave the S Voice screen, you typically lose the ability to issue further commands—until you return to S Voice. This happens, for example, when you issue an Open app command. If you need to perform specific functions within the app, you have to do so manually or figure out if there’s a way to issue a more complex command from S Voice. Instead of saying “Open Music,” you might say “Play Black Oak Arkansas” (a group) or “Play Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” (a song), for instance.

Second, in some circumstances, S Voice prompts you for missing details in order to complete a command or clarify what you want. For example, if you say “Create new event Shop for trombone,” S Voice asks for a time (because you’ve requested a new event rather than a task) and then asks whether you want to save it to Calendar.

Third, when buttons are displayed (such as Cancel and Save), you can tap or speak the button name to indicate how the current item should be handled. Alternatives, such as saying “Yes” or “No,” are often acceptable, too.

Fourth, you can back out of or halt many commands by saying “Cancel.”

To get you started, review some of S Voice’s supported commands by opening the menu and choosing Example Commands. Here are some others you can use:

• Launching apps. To open an app, you can say “run,” “open,” “launch,” or “start,” followed by the app’s name. After you finish using the app, you can frequently return to S Voice by pressing the Back key repeatedly until you exit the app.

• Controlling settings. Sadly, there are only a few system settings that you can command. You can enable or disable Wi-Fi or Bluetooth by saying “Turn on (or off) Bluetooth,” “Enable (or disable) Wi-Fi.” Because Settings is an app, you can open it by saying “Open Settings.” You can also change the current volume by saying “Volume up (or down)” or “Raise (lower) volume.”

• Safer navigation. Open the Notification panel and enable Car mode by tapping its Quick Setting button. A version of S Voice with huge text and icons launches.

• Calculations. Rather than launch Calculator, speak the calculation that you want to perform. Examples include “472.43 divided by 17.6,” “Multiply 6 by 17.5,” “Square root of 87.5,” “Minus 6.5 times 8,” “What is three-fourths of 17.65?,” and “Calculate 15% of $84.35.”

• Units of measure and currency conversions. Examples include “How many pints in a liter?” “How many millimeters in a yard?” “How many British pounds can I get for $14?” and “Convert dollars to yen.”

• Just-for-fun commands and queries. Try asking/saying the following: “How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?” “Sing,” “Where is Carmen Sandiego?” “What’s the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything?” and “Tell me a joke.”

You can give voice commands to schedule new appointments (events) or tasks. Examples of creating new tasks include: “Create new task give Jethro a bath next Sunday,” “New task install vertical blinds” (when no date is provided, S Voice assumes the task’s due date is today), and “Create task wash car on Saturday reminder on Friday” (adding “reminder on...” instructs Calendar to present a reminder notification on the specified day). Another way to add a reminder is to include a time in the command, such as “New task take out garbage tonight at 10:00 p.m.” Although tasks don’t have scheduled times (only events do), the mention of 10:00 p.m. is interpreted to mean that you want to be reminded at that time.

Scheduling appointments works in much the same way, but events contain additional components. You might say, for example, “Schedule operation at hospital for 7:00 a.m. Wednesday for 4 hours.” Because it includes all essential details for a new appointment, S Voice offers to save it as-is. If it’s lacking an important element (such as the time), S Voice prompts for it. When asked, you can specify both the time and date, such as “Saturday at 11:30 a.m.”

To view a list of your upcoming tasks or events, you can say “Show my tasks” or “Show my appointments.” Each command results in a list, but appointments are read aloud.

1. In S Voice, tap the menu icon and choose Settings.

2. The Settings screen appears. Following are some of the most important S Voice settings.

3. Open Via the Home Key. When enabled, you can launch S Voice by double-pressing the Home key from almost anywhere on the phone.

4. Voice Wake-up. When Voice Wake-up is enabled and S Voice is onscreen, you can speak a phrase (such as “Hi, Galaxy”) to get the app’s attention; otherwise, you must tap the microphone icon. Tap this item to enable, disable, or change the wake-up command.

5. Auto Start Speakerphone. When this option is checked and you instruct the Phone app to place a call, Speakerphone mode is automatically enabled.

6. Show Body of Message. When a text message arrives, S Voice can display the message body (checked) or only the sender’s name (unchecked). If the latter option is chosen, you can ask S Voice to read the hidden message text aloud.

7. Check Missed Events, Personal Briefing. When enabled, missed events and/or your schedule are displayed when you first launch S Voice.

8. Home Address. Tap this setting to record your home address, enabling S Voice to use it to generate responses to you.

9. Log In to Facebook, Sign In to Twitter. If you want to use S Voice to post to a Facebook or Twitter account, you must log into your account(s)—enabling S Voice to do so in later sessions. When enabled, you can say commands such as “Facebook update Has anyone seen the new Godzilla movie?” If the appropriate app isn’t already installed, you’ll be taken to the appropriate Google Play page to download and install it.

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It’s Not All Good: It’s Only a Start

There are several immediately apparent problems with S Voice. (Many of these criticisms apply equally to Google/Voice Search.) First, commands and queries can only be issued from the voice app’s screen. You can control music playback, set or check your schedule, create text messages and memos, and perform calculations, but you can’t issue any commands from within an app—even if S Voice opens the app for you.

Second, because S Voice is designed to recognize English-like commands, there’s no simple way to determine what commands will work without experimentation. You never can tell whether certain commands are impossible or you’re simply phrasing them in a way that S Voice doesn’t understand. For instance, if I request the song “Happy Together,” S Voice ignores the song with that name that’s stored on my S5 and instead attempts to play a song that it thinks is a happy one. (In point of fact, it failed badly, playing the saddest song I had.)

Third, S Voice is inconsistent. When I’m asked which of two appointments to delete and I say “the second one,” it dutifully deletes the correct appointment. But when I ask it to play a song that’s available on three albums, regardless of whether I tap one or say “the third one,” it ignores me and plays the first.

Like many compelling S5 features, I’m torn between marveling at the fact that S Voice works at all and being annoyed that it doesn’t work well enough. For now, I consider it something fun to play with that will undoubtedly get better with each update—much like the improvements I’ve seen in the accuracy of converting voice input into text.

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1. Launch Google/Voice Search by doing one of the following:

• Tap Apps, Google or Apps, Voice Search.

• With the Google Search widget displayed on the current Home screen, tap the widget or say “OK, Google.”

2. The opening screen that appears depends on whether Google Now is enabled (see “Configuring Google/Voice Search,” later in the chapter) and the launch method used in Step 1.

3. If the screen doesn’t automatically request your voice input, tap the microphone icon or say the wake-up phrase (“OK, Google”).

4. Speak a voice command or search request.

5. Depending on the nature of your voice input, an app, web page, or Settings screen opens (taking you to a different screen) or the result is displayed on the Google screen. If you want to issue more commands or requests, do the following:

• If you’re still on the Google screen, tap the microphone icon or say “OK, Google,” and then issue your new command or request.

• If a different app or a Settings screen is onscreen, press the Back key until you reach the Google screen, or press the Home key and start over again at Step 1.

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>>>Go Further: Google/Voice Search Versus S Voice

As you experiment with Google/Voice Search, you’ll see that it’s very much like S Voice. You can issue similar commands in similar language and get similar results. Both require that you have an active Internet connection in order to function. Here are some of the ways in which the Google and Samsung utilities differ:

• In addition to being able to launch apps by saying “run, open, launch, or start app name,” Google can open many Settings screens. Say “Open settings name,” such as “Open Display Settings.” S Voice, on the other hand, is limited to opening the Settings app.

• Google excels at opening websites when compared to S Voice’s ability to do so only with very common sites. Say “Go to” or “Open,” followed by the website name, such as “Open kitco dot com.” (This advanced capability shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, this is Google’s business.)

• You can dictate and send email using Google (“Email Evan Wonderful dinner tonight. Good job!”). S Voice doesn’t support email.

• S Voice does a better job of handling in-app commands—primarily in Music. You can issue additional commands while a song is playing—as long as you do so from the S Voice screen. If you return to Google while a song is playing (in Google Play Music rather than Music) and issue a music-related command, Google responds with “Controlling media is not supported on this device.” Google appears to be unable to issue additional commands of any sort once a target app launches.

• Google doesn’t have some calculation restrictions from which S Voice suffers. In addition, an appropriate calculator frequently appears onscreen, enabling you to try similar calculations and variations. (Note that it’s essential that you speak slowly and clearly.)

• Although Google can schedule appointments (events), it doesn’t understand tasks. When you state the essential elements of an appointment (such as “Meet with Jeremy on Sunday”), Calendar launches and displays a new event containing the information that you spoke. You must manually complete the item by providing the remaining details and then tapping Save. Thus, although it’s far from perfect, S Voice is the better choice for creating, editing, and deleting events—and the only choice for creating tasks.

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1. On the Google, Voice Search, or Google Now screen, open the menu in the lower-right corner and choose Settings. (If you can’t see the menu, you can also open it by long-pressing the Recent Apps key.)

2. The Settings screen appears. Following are some of the most important Google/Voice Search settings.

3. Google Now. You can enable or disable Google Now by changing the position of the switch. (This setting has no bearing on the manner in which voice commands and search requests are performed.)

4. Phone Search. Checked items specify the types of information on your phone that will be examined when performing voice searches and commands. Generally, you’ll want to leave all of these content areas checked.

5. Voice. These settings enable you to change the input language, specify whether Google responds audibly (Speech Output enabled) or only in text, whether it activates in response to the wake-up phrase (“OK, Google”), and whether it recognizes input from a Bluetooth headset.

6. Accounts & Privacy. The only setting that has a significant effect on voice commands and searches is Contact Recognition. When checked, Google uses your Contacts records to determine who you’re trying to reach when calling people or creating text messages and email, for example.

7. When you’re done viewing and changing settings, press the Back key or tap the Back icon.