One of the greatest things about our smartphones is the way that we can use them. We’ve come a long way from typing on physical keyboards and not touching screens. Our phones are some of the most technologically advanced devices in our lives, and interacting with them continues to get better.
It may not be improving as fast as some people might like, of course. Samsung used to be a proponent for new and interesting, if not admittedly gimmicky, ways of using our phones. Remember when Samsung made it so you could look away from your phone during a video, and it would actually pause and wait for you to look at it again? Scrolling through pages, just by looking at the bottom of the screen?
All of those things sound pretty great in theory, but unfortunately the practice didn’t pan out the way that Samsung would have liked. It was a nice try, though.
And then there’s the Moto X from Motorola. This phone had some really strange marketing, with one person talking to another person, but the second person was actually a visual representation of the Moto X. The point was that you could talk to your phone and it would do things, like launch an app or song within an app, all while keeping your hands away from it.
Voice control is still a pretty big part of the Moto X, and I don’t think the lack of marketing for the feature has anything to do with a lack of focus on the feature, specifically. More just a lack of marketing as a whole for the newest, second generation variant.
In any event, Motorola tried to make voice controls a big part of the device’s selling points, and even Google as a whole has put a large focus on allowing people the ability to just talk to their phone and get something done. Specifically, saying “OK, Google” on many handsets will bring up the ability to ask Google a question, or even enact simple commands.
That functionality extends to Android Wear, where saying the aforementioned command will prompt several different potential actions.
Apple has their own voice-prompts, too, for its digital personal assistant, Siri. You have to be plugged in and charging if you don’t want to activate it without touching something on the phone, but it’s there. It’s an even bigger point on the new Apple Watch, where voice commands can make actually touching the new wearable not all that important.
I’ve gone back and forth on using voice commands. I think it’s pretty cool, and there’s a part of me that harkens it back to the old sci-fi movies of way back when, but I think I’ve just grown too accustomed to actually physically handling my phone. I prefer to activate something by touching the icon, and typing something out. I try to use commas and periods in my texts, and saying that nonsense out loud just seems weird.
So my question to you is whether or not you’ve adopted voice commands in your daily routine. Have you opted to ask Siri, or Google or Cortana, to do something for you so you don’t have to use your fingers to get it done? Or are voice commands something you’re not interested in? Let me know!