Text to speech via Bluetooth

[skorpien]

Before getting my S3, I had a short stint with a Nokia Lumia 900. And while it generally left a bad taste in my mouth, there was one feature that was surprisingly useful and I absolutely loved.

While connected to my car's Bluetooth it was able to notify me of incoming texts, ask if I wanted it read, read it aloud if I said yes, and even reply to the text (albeit with preloaded responses).

I've been looking around and thought Driving Mode was what I wanted, but it only reads the sender's name and not the message itself. Are there any apps available that will read my texts through Bluetooth and allow me to reply? (Text-to-speech, speech-to-text.) Thanks in advance!

 

[blksnake]

Very cool feature indeed. Hopefully someone has come across an app the does the same (Fingers crossed).

 

[skorpien]

Hi blksnake, just wanted to let you know that I was able to get it to work without the need for any apps. I was unaware that the S3 has the feature built in using a Bluetooth profile (Message Access Profile) since it seemed to not work with my car's Bluetooth whereas my Nokia worked out of the box. After some tinkering though I managed to get things working the same way they did with the Nokia

 

[RALindblom]

Can you let me know what you did to get that feature to work? I can pair the phone use entunes but it will not read text messages through the car.

 

[skorpien]

The car has to support the Bluetooth Message Access Profile (MAP) for it to work. I had to update my car's NAV unit (2011 Ford Fusion with SYNC) to the latest firmware version, then enable MAP through SYNC's Bluetooth devices advanced menu and re-pair my S3 with SYNC.

From what I've read online, the MAP profile seems to be pretty touchy with people reporting both failures and successes getting it to work with their units. Hopefully you can get it to work with yours. My suggestion is to make sure your unit supports MAP and apply any firmware updates that may be available.