First, new features were tested for their products in November, such as the voice search button on Chrome for Android. Then, the continuous improvement in voice typing on smartphones. Today (03/12), International Day of Persons with Disabilities, Google announced that Android 11's improved voice recognition has been made available for older phones.
O VoiceAccess was developed by Google as an accessibility app, aimed at people with motor difficulties, although it can be used when full use of the hands is not possible. Since it is an accessibility app, the company certainly had in mind, when announcing its retroactivity, the objective of facilitating the use of the cell phone also for users of older versions of the Android. It is a very welcome and appropriate change for today.
The improved version of the app, released on Android 11, is still in beta and may suffer from bugs and errors, but is available for Android 6.0 and later versions. The adjustments to the tool were made possible thanks to Google's artificial intelligence, which can now understand context, making life much easier for users. Basically, instead of searching for a video on YouTube using your voice to navigate to the search bar and saying the name of the video followed by “enter”, as was done before, simply go to the YouTube app and say, for example, iPhone 12 and that's it. The search will be done automatically.
The new look of the app can be seen in the following video:
When installing or updating the app to the new version, the user is free to choose whether Voice Access will start with the smartphone or if they prefer to say “Hey, Google, Voice Access” to use it when needed. As previously mentioned, this improved version is still in beta, meaning that it is not enough to simply install the app. Therefore, to use the new version, you must participate in beta and only after that install Google Access or update it.
Through which channels you reach those people, classic and out of the box. XDA Developers e 9to5Google.
Image: Andrea Piacquadio / Pexels