I’ve been playing around with voice input under Android 2.1. It’s a feature that’s easy to miss, cause the key that starts voice input only appears on the keyboard if you’re on a general text entry field. So for instance, I started up GMail to give it a try the first time, but there’s no speech input button. I assumed it wasn’t enabled and went hunting around for additional options. Turns out I just needed to move past the address field and go to the subject or body. Makes sense, but wasn’t completely obvious to me.

I could see the feature being useful for text messages for instance. But for me the accuracy is still a bit low. Got errors trying it while enunciating strongly in a quiet room. Some of the problems I’m having saying it’s going to be a useful feature are that it’s really difficult to go back and edit out those mistakes. The entire sentence I just dictated is underlined as previous input once the detection is done. So a backspace to try to replace the last word for instance – that erases the entire input. And if it just got a sentence correct and I want to go on, I need to hit the speech input button again to go ahead and dictate some more.

I’m sure the issues are because this was born out of a “voice search” usage and not a general dictation application. Just something to keep in mind if you’re planning to use it. I’ll have to get a 2.2 rom on the phone and see if there are any additional options in there that address this.