Speech to Text in mobiles? Jury is still out.

Engadget points to this review about the new Cingular Samsung P207 that was released with a Speech to Text engine built in it. From the review though, it looks like we are still a little ways to go before this is the next big thing. I for one have not seen an interface designed into a mobile device for input that makes the grade. Speech to text/command is very important for future mobile devices.

The review states that P207 needs to be trained for about 3 minutes for it recognises your voice. The user still needs to speak slowly and clearly, that means being in loud background noise areas would cause it great difficulty.Good news though, is that it can be taught new words, so the vocab is extendable.

Of course the big issue is how these types of devices handle other dialects. I’ve played with high end US dialect systems in the past and the Aussie accent is like speaking to it in native Hindu.