Having only recently upgraded my first generation iPhone to the 3GS, I’m still quite enamored with the voice recognition aspect to the iPhone. Whether I’ve needed to or not, I’ve absolutely voice dialed friends and family alike just to use the feature.
Thus, I was very excited to try out Dragon Search (free), knowing it could take voice recognition on the iPhone one step further; it did not disappoint in the least. Being able to speak a phrase into my phone and have it simultaneously search Google, Wikipedia, Twitter, iTunes and YouTube is very handy, to say the least.
Now, to my mind, the most important aspect of voice recognition software is whether or not it actually can recognize what you’re trying to say. In this respect, Dragon Search is nearly flawless. I can be fairly mush-mouthed at times, and I’ve spoken several odd phrases into the search just to test it out. While it slipped up when I searched for “pitas,” returning “pizzas” instead, it has otherwise preformed quite well. It even takes the context of your sentence into consideration, so that homophones like ‘where’ and ‘wear’ aren’t used incorrectly. If you say that you’re “looking for something to wear” it won’t come back “looking for something to where.”
Each search also comes back quickly, and you’re given the option to open up Web pages in Safari if you’d prefer that to the in-app browser. That would be especially useful to those who prefer Web browsing in landscape mode, as the iPhone app only supports portrait. In fact, that lack of landscape support is about the only strike against Dragon Search. Odd name aside, this is a must-own for anyone who would prefer to expand the iPhone’s voice capabilities outside of their iPod and iPhone service.
