Command your Lumia the easy way: talk to it

Published by Adam Fraser on August 2, 2012

Forget using your thumbs to type out a text message and say goodbye to flicking through your People hub to make a phone call, let your voice do the work for you. Your Nokia Lumia has the power to turn your spoken words into actions, thanks to speech commands.

To let your Nokia Lumia know that you’re ready to speak to it directly, press and hold the Windows start button and your smartphone will be put into listening mode.

Speech listens out for four basic commands: Call; Text; Find; and Open. By starting your voice command with any one of these, your Nokia Lumia will easily be able to help you out.

Nokia Lumia 920 and Lumia 820

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Call

The Nokia Lumia is capable of populating your People hub with all the people you know through your social networks and any others you may add from other sources. This usually leads to a long list of contacts. To find the right person and to call them in super-quick time, use the Call command. For example, “Call Lisa Miller”. In seconds your phone will be calling Lisa Miller and all you’ve done is ask your phone to do it.

You could even be a little more specific. If the person you want to call has several numbers saved against their name, you can jump right in and say “Call Lisa Miller Work”. This will call her work number. You can also add another command to the end of that sentence and have it dial her using your speakerphone by saying “Call Lisa Miller Speakerphone”.

Speech commands texting Speech commands composed message

Text

In a similar way from calling, this is a faster way to send somebody in your People hub a quick text message.

Start with the Text command and by saying “Text Lisa Miller”, for example. Your Lumia will find the contact and after a few seconds you’ll be asked to say the message you want to send. It’ll be typed out in front of your eyes. Finish by telling your phone to send.

Speech commands Bing search Speech commands images

Find

With the Internet at your disposal you can have your Lumia search it for absolutely anything, using your voice. Press and hold the start button and use the Find command.

The Find function uses Bing to bring you search results. This means that if you want to “Find coffee in London”, you’ll be shown a map of London with a list of coffee shops (or just use “Find coffee shops” for anything local to your current position). If you want to know the weather San Francisco, the Web search will show you the current weather, plus the five-day forecast right at the top of the results page.

You can search for anything on the Web using just your voice.

Speech commands listening Speech commands opening apps

Open

Opening apps is really easy. Using the Open command you can open Nokia Drive, the calendar or your favourite pizza app, for example.

Not only can you open any of the apps you’ve downloaded from Windows Phone Marketplace, but it works for practically anything. You can open the People Hub, Messaging, Internet Explorer or Microsoft Office. If it’s on your phone, you can open it using just your voice.

Powered by Microsoft TellMe, there’s hardly any need to repeat the commands as it gets it 9 times out of ten, regardless of how quiet, gruff or high pitched your voice is.

This feature is already built-in to every Nokia Lumia phone. That means your Nokia Lumia 610, Nokia Lumia 710, Nokia Lumia 800 or Nokia Lumia 900 is already setup to use speech commands.

Do you talk to your Nokia Lumia? Have you used any commands we’ve not mentioned above? Use the comments section below to let us know what you think.

Image credit: CarbonNYC

Comments

  • http://conversations.nokia.com/ Adam Fraser

    I love being able to open apps on my Lumia just by telling my phone to do it.

    • http://conversations.nokia.com Ian Delaney

      I have never done this. But I am going to start doing so. In my best Cpt Picard voice.

      • http://conversations.nokia.com/ Adam Fraser

        Make it so.

      • http://twitter.com/_Ant1_ Antoine Naaman

        Hadn’t tried it extensively before either. But this is looking super cool so I’m going for it!

    • http://twitter.com/bluechrism Chris Martin

       I was able to when i remembered to use the word open. For a while i was a bit confusted because just saying “Nokia Maps” opened nokia maps, but saying “Nokia Drive” searched for drive on the web.

  • http://twitter.com/bluechrism Chris Martin

    I’d like to see voice in more places (e.g Address in Drive) and it does work well for calling, searching or opening apps – but for texting, no so good.

    The number of times i’ve been driving and did “Text (name)” and then started to dictate my text for it to end up with something that is entirely not what i said is annoying.  It either works right the first time, or after the 3rd attempt i cancel out (using the button on screen as there is no voice option to cancel) and say “Call (name) instead. Maybe, it’s because i’m an englishman in the US so it has a problem with my accent (and i can only the imagine how well it must work for people with thick scouse/brummie/geordi/glaswegian accents).

    Also don’t pause between sentences – if you want a full stop/period in your text, forget it because that long of a pause will mean it thinks you finished the message. 

    Having said all that, i really appreciate that it’s there and for simple “running late” type texts it is great to be able to send those hands free without having to stop somewhere.

    I think that despite how things are with voice there is still a place for “Car Mode” type apps, especially on Windows Phone where changing between music, maps, and contacts can be awkward on screen and the “open” command only opens a new version and doesn’t switch to an already running instance. e.g If i’m navigating and switch to the music app to skip a track or see what song is playing, and then want to switch back, saying “Open Nokia Drive” will mean my current navigation will be lost and i’ll have to re-enter my destination. ALso i have had names of contacts not be found or found a person with a similar name instead when i use the “Call” or “Text” command so having a Car Mode style (i.e large buttons, limited functionality) alternative to use in these cases would be really useful.

    Plus, how is voice going to work with my MirrorLink enabled car HUD? (ok, so i don’t have one of those)

    • http://conversations.nokia.com/ Adam Fraser

      I think there’s still some work to be done in voice recognition in general. We’re far away from being totally voice automated, that will probably take a few more years yet.

      But what we’ve got works really well, I think.

  • Mestek Dallas

    I use voice commands every so often but the one that I end up using the most is the feature in text messaging that works when my Lunia 900 is linked to my car via bluetooth.  When I receive a text I get the option to say “read it” or “ignore”.  If I choose “read it” I then get the option to “reply”, “call”, or “I’m done”.  If I choose “reply” then I can dictate the reply message and “send”.  Still not the ultimate in driving safety but when stuck sitting in a traffic jam it is pretty handy.

    • http://conversations.nokia.com/ Adam Fraser

      That’s a great tip, @google-70ebc9baf233d9dd4a1a119197971e4f:disqus. I didn’t test driving, so thanks for that.

      • http://www.facebook.com/kristian.kamstrup Kristian M Kamstrup

        I have a Nokia Blutooth headset while biking or running and Nokia Car kit when driving.
        Opening Nokia Drive has to be done by saying” Open Drive” not “Open Nokia Drive”. Recently if the phone is locked it replies “starting Nokia Drive” but it just unlucks the phone. It doesn’t start Nokia Drive. If you repeat it it does. But that is a new error, it used to work.
        If I’m not mistaken Microsoft i currently adding a lot more languages to the TellMe service.

        One thing it lacks, at the old Nokia phones also did, is the abillity to write names phonetically in the call card/adress book. Sometimes the voice-function has a weird perception of how names should be pronounced.

        Texting is great, but I also lack the option to add full stops and create longer texts.

    • http://twitter.com/dalydose Jeff Daly

      This is how I end up using voice the most.  I just wish there was a way to add punctuation.

      I also make about 75% of my outgoing calls with my headset and voice commands.

      Recently, I started using the “Assistant” app too.  It’s kind of like Siri.  I use it mostly to create calendar events or for web searches.

  • http://www.geekchoice.com Dagmar Schneitz

    So the voice commands can save you a few seconds. But those seconds add up into minutes and time is a precious resource you can’t get back. 

  • steelicon

    Been doing this on a 2007 Nokia Symbian 60V3FP1 Nokia N82 black mobile phone. On offline mode, too, no need for 3G or WLAN connection. Then Vlingo is also neat for what the built in Voice Command cannot do, but then requires to be online again. Good times. :-)

  • Henrik Hjerppe

    Wondering why voice is not available here in Finland. I mean, I would be perfectly happy with English voice commands (at least to try it out, not sure if my pronunciation is good enough though).

    • Pyry Partti

      I know right! That’s why my 800 was in English. I changed it back to Finnish yesterday.

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/TUIRLC2S5QTZQ3DZQIVMDOMDRE Marcus

    I’m struggling to understand why it’s necessary to have the data connection on to use voice to dictate text messages. I mean…it’s got several gigs of memory on the phone, so why is it using a data connection to be able to do stuff? It makes no sense to me….or am I just being a complete noob?

  • satvik

    my phone does not understand indian accent. would ve been amazing if it did

  • http://twitter.com/peerke63 Peter

    I’m sorry to see/hear there is no dutch-supported voicecommands. Did have it on my N8. Miss it….

  • Max

    Does it support Russian for voice commands?

  • Umar Ghauri

    does it same feature voice command in NOKIA LUMIA 610.?

  • http://www.facebook.com/hachi.rizki Hachi Rizki

    It works well on my phone except texting… I can tell her to text one of my contacts. But she never stops thinking when I say my text message. Even for a simple word ‘hi’
    What should I do to make her understand my message then..??

  • Paul

    Is it possible to cancel speech mode? Since I dont speak American English my phone doesn’t follow me. It just becomes disturbing and happens randomly. Tried everything I can.

  • ark

    how to use call talker app for windows nokia lumia 820 cell??