MakeUseOf Your iPhone: Set Up Voice Dialing With Cactus

One of the biggest gripes about the iPhone is the lack of voice dialing. Almost every other phone I have ever owned, even the cheezy flip-phone, has had some kind of voice command feature. I’ll be honest, I was never a huge user of this feature, but sometimes it was nice to be able to say “home” and call my parents while driving somewhere.

Here’s an App that attempts to rectify the iPhone’s lack of voice dialing capability. It’s called Cactus Voice Dialer (iTunes Link) and it’s free in the App Store. To put it simply, Cactus listens to your commands, interprets them intuitively, and tries to find the right number in your contact list. The neat thing about it is that there’s almost no set-up whatsoever.

Many built-in voice calling systems require you to record a keyword for each contact or “train” the speech algorithm. Cactus uses a speech recognition system that doesn’t require any training at all. That system is PocketSphinx, a mobile version of the Sphinx recognition system developed at Carnegie Mellon University.

When you first bring up the App, it has a quick cheat sheet for command entries, a settings button, and a “Speak” key (visible on the right). Holding down that last key while giving your command should bring up the desired contact. For instance, If you say “Call John Doe” and John Doe is a contact on your phone, their name should appear immediately after that. If they have more than one phone number, Cactus will automatically click through and show you all of them. You can specify “Call John Doe’s Mobile” as well if you solely want to bring up your contact’s mobile number.

There are a number of options to choose from in the settings that relate directly to how much you trust the App to get the right person. The first setting allows Cactus to begin the call as soon as it determines the contact you want. I would recommend holding off on this option until you are more comfortable with the App. Next is the option to allow multiple results after a query. This is handy if you simply want to use Cactus to quickly find contacts. Last, there is an option to only bring up the primary number for each result (which could save some click-throughs).

Of course the key to any voice recognition system is accuracy. How well does it work? Well, after testing it with a number of different types of names, it seems to respond with a fair amount of accuracy. The settings let you meter your level of trust, so you can use it as voice calling or simply a voice-based contact book (which is mostly how I use it).

Cactus is a little on the “heavy” side for a free App. If you download a lot of Apps, you’ll notice that very few are above 1MB in size. Cactus Voice Dialer is 4.9MB. Presumably the voice recognition software is what takes up most of the space.

Tip: One little trick I’ve found helpful is to alter my voice commands slightly. The App suggests saying “Call” next to each contact’s name, but this seems to be completely unnecessary. Also, if you just want to quickly jump to a small group of names, you can say “John,” and all the Johns on your phone will appear. This is by far the most reliable way to call up names because as long as you don’t rush your pronunciation, which might be tempting for shorter names, you’ll almost always get your desired contact up on the results list.

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The main question I leave you with is this: Is voice dialing really necessary on the iPhone? If the recognition isn’t perfect and you just use it as a shortcut for your address book, is it really any faster than double-clicking the home button (presumably taking you to your favorite contacts)? I’m still not sure if I’m going to use this much in the long run.