Help hands-free dialing with Sprint HTC EVO 4G

[cliffie]

Hi.

I have an HTC EVO 4G from sprint, software release 2.3.3

and i'm a total phone dummy.

when i bought the phone, i was told i could do hands-free dialing.

so a couple of months later, i got a blue ant Q2 bluetooth.

i spent 3 hours trying to get it to work yesterday.

i can pair it. i can connect it. but it keeps telling me that i can't do voice-activated dialing.

i called blue ant 2 times. they said my phone didn't support voice-activated.

i called HTC. they said the same thing.

I called sprint. they knew nothing. after dealing with 3 people, they finally said it didn't support it. and i'm outside of the 30 day window, so tough.

0 - and i have vlingo installed. i was using it before i bought the Q2... it's ok, but i still have to push buttons on the phone, so can't use while driving.

here's my questions:

- should i return the Q2 to best buy
- should i buy some other blue tooth thing-y
- is there any way to make voice-activated dialing work
- will future software releases solve this problem

0 - and did i post this on the right forum?

thanks, everyone.

stupid in sprint land!

 

[KenjiSpencer]

There's hands-free phone dialing (i.e., specifying a phone number once the call has been initiated), then there's hands-free call initiation (i.e., starting a phone call using only your voice). The Evo 4g supports the former, but it sounds like you really want the latter.

As far as I know, there is no completely hands-free call initiation for the Evo 4G that works under all circumstances. The closest configuration is probably using Vlingo in its In Car mode. In this mode, Vlingo waits for you to say a specific phrase (e.g., "Hey Vlingo") to wake it up, then you can say something like "call John Smith", and if there's a John Smith in your list of contacts, Vlingo will make the call.

There are two problems with this configuration:

(1) Vlingo listens only to the Evo's microphone, not the microphone in any Bluetooth device you may be using (e.g., my Sena SMH10 motorcycle headset). However, this might work for you if you're driving in a car with your Evo on the dashboard. Once Vlingo places the call, it may route the call to your Blue Ant headset.

(2) (and this is a real shame) If Vlingo doesn't correctly understand your "call John Smith" command, instead of telling you what it thinks you said and asking you whether it understood you correctly, Vlingo will try to call whoever it thinks you said without confirming this action with you first. So, if you said "call John Smith", but Vlingo heard "call Jan Smythe", Vlingo will start searching the web for the closest match to Jan Smythe that it can find, then place the call without warning you what it doing. Or, it will say "I didn't understand you", then force you to press a button on the screen to cancel the call. Totally un-hands-free and really stupid.

By the way, problem (2) exists for EVERY Android hands-free phone dialer that I know of. As a professional software engineer, I'm appalled that I can't just reliably voice-dial someone in my Evo's list of contacts like I could do with my old Palm Treo 650.

The only other way I know to initiate a phone call hands-free is by using Blue Ant's S4 car speakerphone. You say "Blue Ant, speak to me" to wake the S4 up, then say "phone commands". This will make the S4 activate the default hands-free dialer on your Evo (e.g., Vlingo), then you can say "call John Smith". But then you've got potential problem (2) above.

It's really a shame that no Android software developer has implemented a TRULY hands-free call initiation/dialer for the Evo. I'd buy it in a second.

Edit: looking at the Q2's web page, it looks like the Q2 should support the same hands-free functionality as the S4. I know that the S4 works, because I own one. Therefore, I'm a little confused as to what you mean when you say "(the Q2) keeps telling me that I can't do voice-activated dialing". When you say "phone commands" to the Q2, what happens exactly?