Vlingo: Siri Alternative for iOS

Since the launch of Siri powered iPhone 4S, everybody has grown nuts about the long neglected voice recognition feature. But the thing is, Apple and the iOS team are never going to port Siri to other iOS devices, and never will they put Siri into your old iPhone 4 and 3GS. Yet, everyone has been craving for this cool, functional feature and pray that it works on their smartphones and tablet. So...I'm please to inform you that there actually is an alternative, and fortunately, it works, at least most of the time. 

This app is called "Vlingo". It probably isn't as smart as Siri, but it does manage most of the tasks that I've thrown to it. The only draw back I guess, is that you can't just press and hold the home button to activate Vlingo, you have to launch the app, lol. The app is what we call a simplistic design, with a huge "Press & Speak" button (similar to Siri's big round button) at the top of the screen, which you can tap and give your commands. You don't really have to hold the button like you did in Siri, just tap and release, then speak out your command. Once you're done, Vlingo will start searching for items that match your command. You can do a lot of stuff with it, like web search, searching for places in Google Map, sending emails and perform social updates (only available for Facebook and Twitter). You can choose either US or UK accent to ease the engine's recognition. I was amazed when I found out that Vlingo actually understand my half-baked US accent (I'm a Malaysian, fyi). Another shockingly amazing thing is, it can actually understand me when I try to ask it to send email to my friends who both use Malay and Chinese names. The map search is also quite efficient, as it didn't just manage to find me places in the US, but also successfully locate states and cities in Malaysia, isn't that crazy? 

Although this is not a Siri replacement, it's totally worth trying, especially when it's being offered for free. Though you might be disappointed that it's designed for smaller screen devices like iPhone and iPod, I can assure you that it works as perfect on my iPad 2, only with a uglier screen (I have to enlarge it to fit to my 9.7" screen.


Note: It's also available in the Android Market for Android smartphone users.