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SmartPhone and Voice Command

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Voice Command on the Samsung i730 rocks. I have a minor limitation with the Sony Ericsson HBH-662, but I will live with it because of Voice Commands accuracy.

I work from our Reston, Virginia office or my home office when I am not at a customer site. In both locations, I have very poor reception with Verizon. My home is on the back slope of a ridge and the Reston office is shrouded in steel. I want my customers to use one number to reach me at any time or place.

When I work from home or the Reston office, I end up forwarding my i730 to the land line. And in our progressive office in Reston, I have the additional step of forwarding my office number to my desk for the day.  Those with Verizon may or may not know that dialing *72 plus a phone number will forward your calls to that phone number. You will still incur applicable airtime charges for calls received, but you can hold customer calls without the fear of dropping mid-sentence. To cancel the call forward, you simply dial *73.

In order to simplify the call forwarding life, I have created an Outlook contact simply named "Forward" with the following:

  • Work: *727035551212
  • Home: *727035551213
  • Mobile: *73

As a result, I can issue the following Voice Commands: "Call Forward ... Work" to forward the mobile phone to my Reston desk number. I can command "Call Forward ... Mobile" to cancel the call forwarding. The caveat for anyone new to this type of mobile life is remembering to cancel the forward!

SmartPhone Search For Signal

Of course, after forwarding the calls, I issue the "Flight Mode On" voice command. When the SmartPhone loses signal it munges away battery life because it's constantly looking for that signal. I wish the SmartPhone had a more intelligent way of dealing with extended period of lost signal. Search constantly for 5 minutes, search every 10 seconds for the subsequent 2 minutes, and every 30 seconds for every minute beyond that until it finds a signal or the owner uses the device. The cycle could reset only if the phone obtains a signal for 30 seconds or more. Right now the phone just burns the battery constantly searching for a signal.

An additional option (key word being "option") is the ability to enter flight mode if the phone does not find a signal after X minutes.

I sure that enough IT professionals encounter this problem working in signal shielded data centers or large steel buildings.

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