Utter Robustifies Voice Control In Android, Adds App Support

Android was doing voice recognition for a long time before Siri came around, but the truth is Apple’s implementation of voice commands made Google’s look limited and out of date. And that hasn’t changed in the last few months, despite a few Siri-like apps that have attempted to cash in on the “talking at your phone” craze.

This app, called Utter!, is the first one that actually makes voice control on Android look better than Siri. It hooks into applications, handles compound and stacked phrases, and may actually be useful.

The video demonstration is quite long, but the first few minutes show quite a bit, and around the ten-minute mark, he shows how the app is aware that a default app is unavailable, and failsafes to a web search.

Note that the app is set at a slower setting in order to have maximum accuracy for this video. Even so, some of the actions definitely take a bit too long to execute. But the promise of Siri is alive in Utter. The ability to take actions within apps looks great; I for one wouldn’t mind dictating a note into Simplenote, or sending a message to one of my colleagues in a chat app, without having to move my hands around too much.

The app is still in development by XDA forum member Brandall, and there’s no indication of a release date. One caveat: Utter doesn’t just magically hook into your apps. They have to enable support by adding a few lines of code. That’s not so much to ask, but it could limit the cool factor if it launches without support from the most popular apps.