Voice Answer

Category

Description of App

Voice Answer is a voice assistant that gives answers on many topics and can assist you with lots of tasks. We have introduced a stunning 3D robot with whom you can chat, ask detailed questions and who can guide and help you. The knowledge base behind the app contains 'Wolfram Alpha' as well as Wikipedia amongst others, which gives you an enormous amount of information in your pocket. Examples of topics and specific questions and commands: Text: 'Send text to George I will be late' Email: 'Email John Let's get together this week.' Call: 'Call mom' Translation: 'Translate I would like to go now into Spanish' Play songs on your device: 'Play music by Adele' Reminder: 'Set reminder to 5 pm' Social media: 'Post to Facebook This is great', 'Tweet I am going home now' Search: 'Google this','Wiki that' Location: 'Where am I?' Places: 'Where is the nearest bank?' Mathematics: 'Integrate sin x dx from x=0 to pi' Units & Measures 'U.K. men's size 11 shoe in Japanese size' Money & Finance 'What is the Apple stock price' Dates & Times 'What is the current time in Tokyo?' Current Weather 'What will be the high temperature today?' Health & Medicine 'What is the life expectancy of a U.S. female age 30?' Places & Geography 'Where is ZIP 60637?' Socioeconomic Data 'Compare the age pyramid of New York and Miami' People & History 'When did Gandhi die?' Food & Nutrition '2 slices of swiss cheese' Physics: 'What is the speed of light?' Materials: 'Show me Topaz' Education: 'How many kids are repeating primary school in California?' Culture & Media: 'US constitution' Organizations: 'New York University' Astronomy:'Star chart' Transportation: 'Compare total length of all roads in USA and China' Words & Linguistics: 'Show me words that rhyme with bear' Earth Sciences: 'When was the Jurassic Period?' Life Sciences:'Compare puma, lion, red fox' Sports & Games:'San Francisco Giants' Web & Computer Systems: 'What is the cheapest tablet?' Colors: 'What do you get when you mix red and blue' The answers are spoken out, and relevant images are given. You can also just have a general chat with Eve. Test her witty personality or just ask her to tell a joke or two. Common Questions and concerns: Q: Why do I get strange answers to my question? A: Voice Answer will first check it's knowledge servers, including Wolfram Alpha's award winning service, for an answer. If these don't respond, either because the answer is unavailable or the servers are down, the chatbot will answer the question. These answers are generally more funny than useful. You can avoid strange answers by disabling the chatbot, and try your question later. We are further enhancing our current data sources with additional databases as these become available, as we want to offer our customers the very best. Q: What do I do when voice answer doesn't understand my voice? A: Voice Answer compares your voice against a database of spoken english words and sentences. It works better for some people than for others. In general it works better than the voice recognition used by many other apps, but it depends on your accent. Try to speak slow and use regular sentences. If this doesn't work, you can use the keyboard. As and when better voice recognition algorithms are developed and become available, we can and will plug these in. Q: The app crashes. What can I do? A: On some devices such as the iPad1 or 3GS, it may sometimes be required to do a hard reset to get it to work. If this fails, removing the app and installing it again will generally get it going. We are working on improving the stability on those devices. We take your comments and criticisms very seriously and we plan to add additional features and further improve the app with a series of updates. Contact us at support@sparklingapps.com for any questions or comments.

Version

2.04

Free or Paid

Paid

Apple Watch Support

Not Known

Device(s) App Was Tested On

iPhone
iPad

Accessibility Comments

AppleVis Editor Note: the Usability Rating has been amended to reflect the comments posted below.

Original comments: their is only one button that is not labeled, which is just a speak button anyway, other than that it is very usable

VoiceOver Performance

VoiceOver reads all page elements.

Button Labeling

No buttons are clearly labeled.

Usability

There are some minor accessibility issues with this app, but they are easy to deal with.

Other Comments

The app is $2.99 in the appstore and is well worth it. In my opinion it is the closest thing to Siri I've seen and even better than Voice assistant, and best of all, it doesn't crash a lot like I've experianced with Siri. Just my 2 cents.

Recommendations

1 people have recommended this app

Most recently recommended by bobby 12 years 2 months ago

Options

Comments

By ming on Friday, September 21, 2012 - 14:33

anyone download it and try it? does it usable? and can someone do a podcast for this app? thanks!
I played with this for a little while today, It's okay. There are a whole mess of unlabeled, or poorly labeled buttons on the details screen. I had a hard time reading back the history of answers, though my question history worked okay with VO. Once I was in the details screen, and I'm not entirely sure how i got there, I could not figure out how to get back to the main screen. It works either way, so it wasn't a big deal. I'll play with it some more tomorrow and hopefully figure more out. I tried to set a reminder, something Voice Assistant does a great job of, and was unsuccessful. But that was only one try at it. I chatted with the bot for a while, and for the most part got useful information. The weather seemed good. The results of a variety of questions were mostly hit, with a few misses. I was a little annoyed that it "knocked" on the screen at me. I have no idea why. The voice replies are mainly an American female voice, but occasionally a British female voice. I'm not sure what's up with that. I found a setting to speed up the voice, and that made it a little better. The "normal" setting was painfully slow. I haven't used it to play music. As far as i know, Apple doesn't let music playing apps update the play counts, and I rely on them for smart playlists The built in iOS voice commands work fine for that for me. Well, other than the inability to play a specific song. All in all, I'd say it's one of the good ones, but I'm still looking for the ultimate voice app.

By AnonyMouse on Friday, September 21, 2012 - 14:33

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

In reply to by DPinWI

There are a lot of Siri like type apps such as Voice Answer. My favorite so far is Evi. How would you compare Evi to this? Evi http://www.applevis.com/ios-app-directory/lifestyle/evi

By DPinWI on Friday, September 21, 2012 - 14:33

In reply to by AnonyMouse

It's up there with Evi. I haven't worked with that app in a while. The main thing I wanted in a voice app was easy reminders settings, and for me, Voice Assistant has been the best at that. There are thinks about all of them to like, and I tend to buy them all, and use the latest until there's a new latest. ha. I'll put Evi back on my iPod and give the two apps a sort of heads up test tomorrow. It wouldn't be fair to Evi to comment any further before reacquainting myself with it.

By AnonyMouse on Friday, September 21, 2012 - 14:33

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

In reply to by DPinWI

I'm with you. So far my top two Siri like apps are Evi and VoiceTexter. So keep us posted on your findings.
I'll dig out Vokul, Evi, Voice Texter, and whaterver else I've bought and forgotten and post some results tomorrow.

By Shersey on Friday, September 21, 2012 - 14:33

In reply to by DPinWI

I haven't tried any of the other dictation apps yet, not really. I've gotten some of them when they were free, but haven't really played around with them. The thing I really love about Vokul is the hands-free dictation mode. It works great if your hands are full or you just don't want to bother with having to press buttons. And I don't really have to worry about battery issues anymore, since purchasing this: http://www.amazon.com/New-Trent-IMP120D-Thunderbolt-Blackberry/dp/B003ZBZ64Q/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1346123288&sr=8-1&keywords=New+Trent+iCarrier It's an awesome battery! Itfits pretty comfortably in my back jeans pocket, and the top doesn't stick out. Also nice s the way it turns off after a few seconds if nothing is plugged into it. I'm beginning to see that I should probably just shut up here and go write an accessory review for the thing. I may put one together later on this week when I have time. Thanks, Shersey

By DPinWI on Friday, September 21, 2012 - 14:33

In reply to by DPinWI

Okay, so i played around for a bit today. Voice Answer does not appear to work with my Bluetooth setup. I have a Sony Bluetooth adapter, and when I use Voice Answer, it ignores it and uses the iPod's speaker. I don't like that. Evi works with my bluetooth just fine. I like that Evi uses VO for speech. It seems faster and it's a voice I'm both more familiar with, and have more control over. Voice Answer's speech is fine, but I think Evi wins this one too. On the things I tried, like weather, and local information , conversions, translations, and the like, I got more detailed responses with Voice Answer. For example, asking for the weather, with the settings set to full detail, I got current conditions, forecasts, average highs and lows, record highs and lows, and all sorts of detail. Evi just said the general conditions and forecasted high and low for the day. I did not find either to be as good at sending emails, or setting reminders. I did not test Facebook or Twitter because I didn't want to spam my accounts with stuff, and didn't have anything I wanted to say. I'll try that at some point. All in all, if your into this sort of app, and you want more detail, Voice Answer is good. Oh, assuming the bluetooth thing isn't a deal breaker for you. Evi seems faster, and a little smoother. Both are good at what they do. I still find Voice Assistant to be the best way to set reminders. I can see me keeping these, and Vokul around, and using which ever one is best for whatever I'm trying to do. As I said before, I'm still looking for the ultimate all in one voice app. But with a few of these, and the built in iOS stuff, I can accomplish pretty much all i want, even if it means using a variety of tools.