On Sat, 7 Aug 2010 21:58:32 -0500, "HeyBub"
wrote:

Metspitzer wrote:
I would post this to a cell phone Usenet group, but I don't know of an
active one. If anyone knows of one, I would appreciate the name of
the newsgroup.

My cell phone has a feature that you can speak the name and it will
call the number. The only problem is that my phone must not
understand hillbilly.

I had about 20 numbers in my phone from people I occasionally call.
Half of the time I could not get the phone to understand me. Because
I only use reading glasses, and don't have them on most of the time,
it would be nice to be able to just speak the number instead of having
to put on my glasses to see. I wanted this to work badly enough that
I deleted all but 8 phone numbers from my contacts and it still
doesn't work right.

A friend and I walk 3 miles almost every evening, and we call each
other to make sure we both are going. I had his name in my phone
directory as Dan. I would say........Dan, and the phone would
ask.......Did you say Pam? No, I didn't say Pam. Well it couldn't
get it. I ended up changing his name to Mike so it would not try to
call my sister. It still misses it half of the time. It does pretty
good if I am still in my car, and have the radio off, but if I am
outside walking, it misses it half of the time.

You would think if they were going to use VR they would at least let
you record your own voice pronunciation with the entry.

It would also be nice if would just start calling out numbers in your
directory. You could have a skip 5 command or a skip 10. Back 1.

After it fails to look up the number you have to press another button
on the phone to try again. You need a "try again" VR command too.

BTW I have a M320 Sprint phone.

A few observations:

A. If the names are numbered, you might get by with just entering a number
(if you can remember the association).

It's been a couple years, but a friend, which carrier he uses I don't
know, complained that he could say 2 and it would dial phone number 2,
but he couldn't say 2 1 2- 2 3 4 - 5 6 7 8 and have it dial that
number. He had a lot more use for that, when he was driving. I
wonder if they ever fixed it.

B. Get a 'phone with a larger screen so you can see the numbers.
C. Go by a Sprint store and explain your problem to the technician. Maybe he
can load the hillbilly dialect detection circuit
D. (My favorite) Get contact lenses for reading (usually a "+" number). Wear
only one. That way you can read, but the fuzzy distance doesn't interfere
with long-distance depth perception, as in driving. There are, however, two
problems associated with this scheme:
I. Some people's brain explodes as it tries to deal with conflicting
information, and
II. Depth perception at less than 18" suffers somewhat.