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Samsung Galaxy S II and Vlingo's Voice Talk: a match made in customer hell(Guardian Web Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) "Unexpectedly easy," boasts the expensive-looking ad for Vlingo voice talk on Samsung's flagship Galaxy SII smartphone. Now you can text your friends hands free, using only your badly-dubbed Hollywood voice. How easy is that? Er, not so fast. Here's the problem: Samsung and Vlingo have made it virtually impossible to disable Voice Talk – meaning Galaxy SII owners have to hack their own phone to turn it off. And they don't like it. That's demonstrated by the most popular comment on Vlingo's official announcement of the "major partnership" with Samsung is: "I am really sick of it and I need to know how can I disable it, Anybody can help me?" I know the feeling. Countless times have I wanted to smash the (otherwise impressive) phone into smithereens after accidentally double tapping the phone's only external button to be greeted with a robotic "What would you like to do?". Another comment on the Vlingo blog says: "Could you advise how to disable the double tap the main button to get Voice command? I appreciate you want this to be on as it's part of your deal with Samsung but it's annoying the Hell out of me and I'm the owner of the device, thus what I want comes above your agreement." Quite right. Attempting to disable Voice Talk in the phone's settings achieves nothing. Selecting force stop on voice commands – as suggested by Yad Faeq – only opts you out of Samsung and Vlingo's separate Voice Talk terms and conditions. But an accidental double tap still asks you: "What would you like to do?" It appears that the only way to disable voice talk is by rooting the £400+ phone. That almost certainly invalidates your warranty - and indicates that somewhere along the line Samsung and Vlingo forgot about the regular customer. Is disabling Siri on Apple's iPhone 4S just as painful? Nope - it's just four clicks. (Settings -> General -> Siri -> off.) The difference between the two, of course, goes way beyond the handset. Apple acquired Siri and spent 18 months making sure it was customer-ready before making it the cornerstone of the new iPhone. (There's a passage in the Steve Jobs biography where he tries it out ahead of the launch: even he didn't manage to flummox it.) By contrast Samsung announced its "major partnership" with Vlingo four weeks before the Galaxy SII – which is based on software from another partner, Google – was released in the UK. The corporate jostling between Samsung, Vlingo and, possibly, Google has resulted in either a huge oversight, or a cynical deal. Either way, the paying customer is left frustrated. Samsung and Vlingo had not returned a request for comment outside regular business hours; this post will be updated when we hear more. For now, enjoy CNet UK's Apprentice-style test of Siri and Vlingo: (c) 2011 Guardian Newspapers Limited. |