Related
It looks like Google has been testing out new voice files to play while using their navigation finally getting away from the overmodulated computer generated voice instructions.
About one month or so ago I was navigating and for a few instruction heard this very clear female voice. This sparked my interest in why it only said two steps of the entire trip and thought they did an update.
Finally I had some free time and went searching and found nothing documented on this change in voice instructions from google. I found ways to utilize the text-to-speach to change the voice, but nothing official from google.
Tonight I was searching my SD card and found under a folder called "Android" more sub folders which were for google navigation which also had two zips inside it as well with TESTDATA for that clear voice I heard about a month ago. One of the zips has english imperial and one in english metric.
Now the question is - how can we make this to play fulltime?
+1this is the only thing I don't like about Google Navigation.
|NeXus S 4G|
I forgot to add the zip of the imperial voice files I found on the SD card. See attached.
I found the new voice too!
I'am italian, and the voice are in italian!!
waiting for a google maps update soon!
Indeed, my fellow Trentino!
Would be a great update to their navigation software. It is just super strange that every so often you will hear the new voice for just one or two directions and it goes back to the modulated voice. Too bad I don't know enough to make it work already. I sure hope that an update gets released soon.
amart79196 said:
About one month or so ago I was navigating and for a few instruction heard this very clear female voice. This sparked my interest in why it only said two steps of the entire trip and thought they did an update.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you remember which version of GMM was you using a month ago?
I first noticed this while on vacation 2 weeks ago in San Diego, that same day I opened the app again and her soothing voice was gone. I hate the robot voice, so she's always on mute lol
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using XDA Premium App
Same here, it's been like 2 o 3 weeks i've noticed a different female voice for some indications...
in italian
Is there anyway to look through voices and pick one to use?
Sent From My HTC Evo 4G Using Tapatalk On The Now Network From Sprint.
Not sure what version it was that it got downloaded with...
I too have heard the fully formed female voice in Google Navigation. It seems to only come up for simple navigation instructions (Turn Left) and not more detailed ones (in one mile, turn left on Main Street).
Also, interesting thing I noticed. If your SD card is out or unmounted, Navigation will use a series of tones to indicate what type of notification you need to take note of for turns and such. Single Dings for upcoming movement, Double Ding for immediate movement, long ding for continue on blah blah. I thought it was interesting.
That all being said, for people who absolutely hate the native Pico TTS voices, you should try the SVOX series of voices on the market. They day and night better, and also seem to have more language locales. They have a few novelty US English ones also, but I don't care for them. I believe they are something 2-3 US$ per voice. Each one is something like 15MB (but can be moved to SD almost entirely).
ryocoon said:
That all being said, for people who absolutely hate the native Pico TTS voices, you should try the SVOX series of voices on the market. They day and night better, and also seem to have more language locales. They have a few novelty US English ones also, but I don't care for them. I believe they are something 2-3 US$ per voice. Each one is something like 15MB (but can be moved to SD almost entirely).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You should try IVONA - it's the best voice synthesizer in the world You could try it on its website: http://www.ivona.com/ and I think application for Android has same quality of voice as WWW.
I also noticed the new voice about a week or two ago. It said the first direction and after that it was gone. I never knew about other voice synthesizers could be used too. I'll have to try these in the mean time until Google changes their default voice.
I do not use map map quest so I don't know what my phone has navigation on me since 2013 and I have had prepaid phone and always get New ones now I have had this phone for about 6months and is shows m my locations since 2013 on prepaid phones I never use map quest and it has a recorded and photos of my exact locations weird helper figure this out some one
I just switched from an iPhone to the G-Note. While I love the phone and the great screen on it, I have a few issues I just don't get and I would "hope" there are work arounds too. Not being in this world of android long however, I'm lost so after digging around and trying to fix things on my own, I'm coming back here with the few remaining questions / issues.
1) Contact Images - WTF is up with the 96x96 crap? I'm pretty sure my old windows 3.1 could handle those too. When my iPhone rang, it would show great full screen images of the caller and not this crappy little image. I've played with a few apps to overcome this, but they all feel like a kludge to me. I am sync'd with both google and exchange contacts, and the problem is on both of them, not one or the other. I know ICS will up that to 256/256 (only on the local device, the sync data to gmail will still be 96/96 acording to the post i was reading by a google dev), but still, most ALL new phones are at least 720p ( or close ).
2) Quality of Apps - No description needed. The quality of Apps for the android, with a few exceptions, doesn't even compair. As an example, where are the real GPS apps? And those that do exist, I can't find a single one that lowers the volume of playing music etc to give directions. This is a STANDARD for all gps systems today, including my aftermarket in car radio...
3) WHY is 1-202-555-1234 not the same as 202-555-1234 as a contact phone number? Really? I get seperate logs for them this way, as well seperate entries in the contacts info ( when for instance I sync with say facebook and they included a "1" in the info there ).
4) Music Player - Similar complaint to #3. But why is the band "Van Halen" not the same as "van halen" in the info? For that matter, it does the same with the album name as well. This does not just hold true for Music player either, many many apps on this platform do this. This has forced me to spend COUNTLESS hours going over my music library on the old PC to make sure everything is the exact same in each and every mp3 file. EVERY programming language in the last 20 years allows you to do case insensitive comparisons...( strcmp, stricmp anyone? ).
5) Ya know, my list is MUCH longer then this, but for the life of me, now that I'm sitting here to rant/ask how to overcome some of these issues, I can't think of them... Story of my life.
Just alot of "little" things like this that make it feel very.. "clunky" to me. I love some of the features, but some of the little unrefined parts are just a pisser.
Jailbroken / rooted what ever. Yes I was jailbroken on my iphone and yes I'm rooted on the GNote.
1. Try GO Contacts or Dialer One(from Market)
2. No can do my friend. Personally I don't think so.
3. Again, Go Contacts or Dialer One
4. Umm... Alternative music player? WinAmp, PowerAmp, DoubleTwist etc.(I don't know why, but that didn't happen on my phone)
rkennison said:
1) Contact Images - WTF is up with the 96x96 crap?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is a samsung touchwiz issue/feauture. I first had an HTC desire then I got a Samsung Galaxy S2, the hardware is great but the software still (after a year of owning the SGS2) feels pretty rough, unlike HTC's Sense
2) Quality of Apps - No description needed. The quality of Apps for the android, with a few exceptions, doesn't even compair. As an example, where are the real GPS apps? And those that do exist, I can't find a single one that lowers the volume of playing music etc to give directions. This is a STANDARD for all gps systems today, including my aftermarket in car radio...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sygic and Navigon are there I guess only TomTom is missing; If you really miss a feature in Sygic usually if you post it in the forum you will find a in an update with 2-3 months.
rkennison said:
2) Quality of Apps - No description needed. The quality of Apps for the android, with a few exceptions, doesn't even compair. As an example, where are the real GPS apps? And those that do exist, I can't find a single one that lowers the volume of playing music etc to give directions. This is a STANDARD for all gps systems today, including my aftermarket in car radio...
3) WHY is 1-202-555-1234 not the same as 202-555-1234 as a contact phone number? Really? I get seperate logs for them this way, as well seperate entries in the contacts info ( when for instance I sync with say facebook and they included a "1" in the info there ).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
2. Really, I've used a friend's iPhone and the apps honestly are the same. I'm not sure what you are talking about...? Google Maps with Navigation Beta is an awesome free navigation system. It's gotten me out of messes just fine. And I think your audio issue is a problem with your OEM. Mine handles lowering the volume just fine. Maybe try another ROM?
3. The numbers are different due to a number of issues. Gosh, how do I explain this.... Ok. All outside-of-area code numbers are now supposed to be dialed as 1 (555) 201 2222 instead of (555) 201 2222 to help the system establish the country. This is especially true for landlines. Since you're on an international phone it helps to add the 1 (or even +1).
So just make it a habit to add +1. So enter it as +15552012222.
I hope that helps.
A couple ICS roms are ready for the Note although they are beta(so what? i used CM9 as my daily driver when it was just in alpha stage!)
Maybe try them first
You mentioned you were running CM9, is that ready in any "reliable" form for the i717? ( I don't have the international , I'm in the USA with "good old" at&t ).
I know Google's option is designed to. Just curious if S voice does the same, guessing not, but did want to ask those with the phone as searches did not seem to find the answer.
Also while I have you, is s voice even worth messing with? I've seen one siri vs s voice comparison that was s voice almost all the way and another that was the exact opposite.
No it is not your wife
There's a ton of videos with it working great most are European people with heavy ass accents speaking English and it does fine so if you speak clearly I don't see it being any kind of an issue
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA
I'm not sure but I think you can actually use Google with S voice. There's a setting in the phone where you can choose your 'Voice recognizer' between Google and Vlingo and I'm thinking S voices uses whichever you select. I've set it to Google.
I noticed I have a lot more success with it than back when I was messing with it on a demo unit (even though I was in a quiet room there). I'm not a native English speaker but it almost always transcribes my voice correctly. It doesn't always do what I want but I guess that will improve too. I guess once you learn its limits it can be very useful.
Ok so. I've been really wanting so much to like this new Nokia Lumia 920. I've had been waiting to get rid of this IPhone 4 because I remember the days of my brick HTC Tilt and how customizable Windows 6 phones were. So far, I'm am disappointed. It isn't that I hate the phone. It is just that I expected more. I was expecting a lot out of this phone and it has not met the high standard that I (they) set for it.
The first major complaint is the camera. Are we being fooled into thinking it is that much better in low light. Yes, from what I've seen in reviews, it is better, but in my own experience, it isn't that much greater (I have tried auto and night mode). Am I too used to SLR pictures? The camera was supposed to be a big selling point! We have already been fooled once by Nokia about their "Pure View." (http: // articles.latimes.com/2012/sep/06/business/la-fi-tn-nokia-fake-ad-20120906) I wonder if all of this is just a scam. Now it seems that Nokia is owning up to more camera flaws (http: // pocketnow.com/2012/11/05/nokia-lumia-920-camera-fix). I really hope that this isn't a hardware issue and that they fix it right and not try any tricks. It isn't that the pictures/videos I take are bad, but they aren't that much greater(if they are greater) than the competition. Duped?
Battery life: I just switched from an IPhone 4 with no 4G LTE so i'm unaware of the battery consumption of 4G LTE but I have noticed that the battery sure does drain a lot quicker. I'm used to being able to go a couple of days without having to charge. I have noticed ways of getting the phone to last longer. Ff you run Nokia Drive beta, the GPS stays on in the background even when it is closed (you will notice a target at the top status bar remains on). You can turn the background option off, or you have to restart your phone to turn off the GPS and it can consume your battery. Yes, this should be an easy fix, but think about all the people that have to deal with this. Also there is not way to switch off 4G LTE.
Limited voice commands: I'm a big user of the voice commands to play my music. One of the first things I've noticed about this phone is that there are no voice commands from the touch and hold windows button that allow you to play your music. I get it that you can get the "Hey DJ" app and use voice commands for music, but why didn't they just integrate this into the OS so that I don't have to unlock my screen, and tap a few places. Isn't the point of voice commands so that you don't have to look at the screen.
Here are some other small complaints (Maybe some XDA developers could help cook up some changes.... I have paypal ).
No separate volume for ringer and music.
Internet explorer is limited when you search through Google
It is easy to accidentally press the back or the search when using the phone with one hand and reaching across the screen.
No apparent way that I have found to get the Nokia Drive Beta to repeat the last spoken direction.
No seeking option in visual voice mail. You have to listen to the whole thing all over again to get to one point in the voicemail.
Bottom line. This phone seems rushed and unpolished. I got it that some of these issues are OS issues, but come on! Am I expecting too much or isn't this the phone that Nokia was making such a large deal about? 10 more days to give this a try before my return policy expires. Come on Nokia and Microsoft. Change my mind!
Camera taking blurry pictures is a SW issue, as you probably know from having read about it, which hopefully theyll have sorted out fast in an SW update. The nighttime pictures Ive taken are very nice, though, so I dont know whats going on there.
Battery for me is fine, Ive only had my phone for a day, so I cant really say much, but the way its worked so far it seems about the same as my SGS3 in that department. Which is quite good. But of course, I need more time for that.
Voice commands I never was a big user of, since I feel like a moron walking around yelling commands in english (especially when Im in a non-english speaking country). But Im sure its annoying.
Volume thing I agree on, that should be an easy fix for MS to make, really.
Not sure what you mean by "limited" when searching through Google?
The accidental pressing is much like on the SGS3, really. Just a habitual thing, youll get used to handling the phone so you eventually dont mispress.
Iunno, I have a single real annoyance and that is wordwrapping in IE10.
i'm not sure what you were expecting from the camera, but the low light shots are some of the best i've ever taken with a smartphone. and i've had my share of smartphones (this year i've probably had between 8-10 different handsets from various oem's) the daytime shots are a little bit soft, but on par with some of the better smarphone camera's i've used, and it's something that is completely possible to fix via firmware updates (as in, it's not a hardware flaw, but rather a software one)
battery is pretty good for me, on par with my SGS3, it's so much better than my 4s on iOS6 though. there are a couple quirks that are causing the battery to drain rapidly, but people haven't been able to point the blame completely yet. some people have had google accounts getting stuck on syncing constantly and that is killing the battery and the only solution for now is a hard reset. it's an odd issue since it wasn't present in wp7.x and afaik the method wp8 uses to sync is the same as before. it's something that will most likely be fixed via software updates as well
limited voice commands are something that wp8 has the ability to deal with but i'm also bummed they didn't add more voice controls to the built in apps. music in general seems like a really rushed revamp in wp8 which is surprising since the zune software was quite well done in 7.x and was also a major feature which i liked a lot about windows phone. they're changing a bunch of stuff though so it's something that will probably be updated over time. personally i don't like voice commands outside of when i'm driving because i feel like it's faster to just use my fingers, but i understand your disappointment.
volume is something i agree on as well, why microsoft hasn't figured out this is something people have been wanting since 7.0 is beyond me, it really seems like a pretty simple change to make, especially when one is rewriting the entire OS.
accidental pressing is something that will lessen with muscle memory, i always have a lot of issues with button presses and a lot of typos when switching phones, but after a couple weeks you learn to do it a lot less.
i remember getting drive to repeat the last direction, but for the life of me right now i can't figure out what i did. if i figure it out, i'll post it.
the OS isn't for everyone, but for people who like the curated user experience a semi-closed system provides, but don't like apple's 1 handset philosophy it's a good platform.
i admit, i get bored sometimes and end up going to android, but almost always, after about a month of whatever the latest and greatest android handset, i always come back to windows phone. once you figure out your workflow on it, it's really the most efficient and fluid mobile OS out there.
Slai said:
Not sure what you mean by "limited" when searching through Google?
Iunno, I have a single real annoyance and that is wordwrapping in IE10.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Word wrapping is exactly what I mean when I say searching through Google is limited. If you use IE and search through google, at the top of the page, you get a: "This page adapted for your browser comes from...." If you search through through the built in Bing search, you don't get the word wrap. You get the actual page. This is very lame and I think its Microsoft's way of getting us to use Bing instead of google.
Also if you just enter the URL, there is no text wrapping.
Okay? Ive set Google as my default search engine in IE10, and while word wrapping doesnt seem to exist and double-tap to zoom isnt really working perfectly, I havent seen a big change from searching with google and searching with bing or just using a bookmark or directly typing in the url :s ?
vangj said:
Word wrapping is exactly what I mean when I say searching through Google is limited. If you use IE and search through google, at the top of the page, you get a: "This page adapted for your browser comes from...." If you search through through the built in Bing search, you don't get the word wrap. You get the actual page. This is very lame and I think its Microsoft's way of getting us to use Bing instead of google.
Also if you just enter the URL, there is no text wrapping.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This will happen if you have the 'defaul view' as desktop, if you select 'mobile' they will display fine, it is annoying, what I did was install the Google app and I just use that for my search and browsing.
Slai said:
Okay? Ive set Google as my default search engine in IE10, and while word wrapping doesnt seem to exist and double-tap to zoom isnt really working perfectly, I havent seen a big change from searching with google and searching with bing or just using a bookmark or directly typing in the url :s ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok so it does text wrap well if you choose the mobile option for internet explore. I for one do not like the mobile version and chose to set my settings to desktop (sorry still a newbie so i can't post links)
ht tp://postimage.org/image/w6w5t09ml/
If you set your IE settings to desktop and search with Google, you get a funky altered website that looks like this at the top.
ht tp://postimage.org/image/j1gnmwfr1/
It seems like the phone is sending to Google that it wants to still be a mobile phone. When you search with Bing you don't get this option. If you search with Google in Desktop mode, you can scroll to the bottom to get to the desktop site but it can be a hassle.
ht tp://postimage.org/image/5zuyx1rct/
Like I said, I like the desktop mode because I can zoom in and out and make great use of this huge screen.
Hoping google releases Chrome.
Yeah normally I like using desktop mode myself, but my most visited website works really well in its mobile form, so I figured "what the hell".
Would be interesting to see Chrome for WP8. I dont see why not, it is available for W8.
vangj said:
If you set your IE settings to desktop and search with Google, you get a funky altered website that looks like this at the top.
http://postimage.org/image/j1gnmwfr1/
It seems like the phone is sending to Google that it wants to still be a mobile phone. When you search with Bing you don't get this option.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you look at the URL of the page in your sample image, the URL is one on Google.com. It seems that Google recognized that you're on a phone and gave you a search results page that contains modified URLs that point back to Google itself (not to xda-developers.com) and that Google then proxied it for you, reformatting things to fit your phone.
Your complaint seems to be with Google for forcing you in to a "mobilized" view. Unless Google can't tell which "website preference" you're set to (mobile or desktop). I don't know how that preference gets conveyed in HTTP requests. Sorry.
vangj said:
Also there is not way to switch off 4G LTE.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My Rogers variant has the "max speed" option to shut off LTE. The AT&T one doesn't seem to have that... so this is an AT&T issue, not a Nokia one. And if AT&T is doing this on Windows Phone, I'd assume they are customizing their Android phones similarly, no? (I have no experience with Android.)
vangj said:
Limited voice commands: I'm a big user of the voice commands to play my music. One of the first things I've noticed about this phone is that there are no voice commands from the touch and hold windows button that allow you to play your music. I get it that you can get the "Hey DJ" app and use voice commands for music, but why didn't they just integrate this into the OS so that I don't have to unlock my screen, and tap a few places. Isn't the point of voice commands so that you don't have to look at the screen.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is an OS issue, so not too much to do with Nokia. The voice commands in WP8 are extensible. That means 3rd party developers can easily create apps that support it. I think Urbanspoon, Hey DJ and Audible are already out and support voice commands (meaning you can launch the apps by long pressing the windows button).
I expect a lot more apps will add that feature because it's so easy to implement. That makes the lack of voice commands for the built in apps really strange.
EShy said:
This is an OS issue, so not too much to do with Nokia. The voice commands in WP8 are extensible. That means 3rd party developers can easily create apps that support it. I think Urbanspoon, Hey DJ and Audible are already out and support voice commands (meaning you can launch the apps by long pressing the windows button).
I expect a lot more apps will add that feature because it's so easy to implement. That makes the lack of voice commands for the built in apps really strange.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Uhm, you could always launch ANY app with your voice, even on WP7.
Those new apps support voice commands for other things. For example, from your start screen you might be able to say, "Urbanspoon, find nearby burgers" and it'll launch and go straight to finding burger restaurants around you. I have no clue what their apps actually support, but I know that it's possible to make an app that does that!
Hey XDA forum,
I've recently rooted my HTC Desire S phone and installed this version of Carbon on it
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2500130
so that I now have Android version 4.3.2 installed. However, I noticed I didn't have the normal Voice Recorder app present on my phone and since one of my primary uses of my mobile phones is that I want to record my voice for music ideas, I need a voice recorder.
So I started looking around on the Google Play Store for the Voice Recorder app that normally comes built-in with your phone. For some reason, it's not present. Anyway, downloading other voice recording software like
RecForgeII or Audio Evolution Mobile Studio (DEMO version in my case), I found out my microphone now has terrible noise being throughput in total silence. Additionally, whenever I speak, the audio level is insanely high and there's distortion and clipping coming in even from a meter away.
So I assume the microphone gain has been set to a too high level.
I figure I need to go into Android Engineer Mode and adjust the microphone settings. After doing a search on the net, I found out I could access the Android Engineer Mode by dialing
*#*#3424#*#*
Now, as soon as I type the closing *, the whole code disappears. However, no HTC Test menu is opened.
How do I access the menu?
Is there another way to adjust microphone gain?
Have others had similar problems after rooting and installing custom ROMs?
Thanks for your help,
Shrooblord
Additionally, I just made a call with my girlfriend and she let me know that in calling, my microphone shows the same behaviour: I sounded distorted and loud and we could only talk normally when I put my phone a meter away from my mouth and used headphones to listen.
I could really use your android expertise on this one, folks.
Work-around
I've ended up not doing this through the Engineer Mode nor with the installation of Carbon.
To fix this, I decided to move away from Clockwork Recovery Mod in favour of TWRP so that I could install Cyanogenmod 12 on my HTC Desire S. After a series of unfortunate events including bricking and successively un-bricking my phone (that took a long time to figure out haha), I've completely installed and personalised my new Android device (it really feels like it's a whole new phone - it's just in an old shell ) and am now running smoothly on Android version 5.1. It also automatically seems to have fixed my mic problem (which I hoped it would). Yay!
But I couldn't have done it if it weren't for this forum and many other resources like this out there on the web. My advice to you when hacking your phone to root it or to install a custom ROM or to fix microphone issues is to look around and not give up searching. It took me a grand total of what I estimate is around 40-50 hours from knowing nothing about custom ROMs and rooting and the like to getting a decent understanding of what steps to perform, how to perform them and more importantly, why. So keep looking. The answer's out there!
And if you can't figure it out today, go to bed and look at it tomorrow. I can tell you, there's nothing quite like approaching a problem with a head full of fresh ideas after a good night's rest.
Good luck out there.
If you've got problems, I'll do my best to keep an eye out on this thread and see if I can help you out.
Shrooblord