Is S Voice Terrible for you on your Gear S2?

[GuyWith4Kids]

It is so terrible that I might have to return an otherwise outstanding watch.. Anyone else having the same experience?

 

[robertopod]

Yes. Worthless. Which ruins the watch for me. Like everything else, but if I can't respond and send messages with my voice then its just a buzzer on my arm that tells me I have a message.

 

[ks-man]

It worked fine for me to respond to a text and transcribe my voice. The room was quiet. It hasn't been great at initiating actions.

 

[L_E_O]

It's workable and not completely useless, but it pretty much makes Wear w/ Google Now look like JARVIS. It's slow, has limited functionality and just seems disconnected from Android as a whole.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N920A using Tapatalk

 

[schwartzki]

My SVoice is worthless, tried doing things I used to on my Moto 360 and it just fails or gets the wording totally off. I enabled SVoice on my phone and even that works much better then the watch. At this point I am not seeing the draw to keep this watch if it cannot do simple things like voice dictate a text.

 

[JAWS40]

To answer you question, Yes. It's terrible. One thing I use my old Galaxy gear for a lot is to set reminders and calendar events. Why is it that my original Galaxy gear watch with the camera on the strap can do these tasks through S voice, but this new watch can't? Also when I try to initiate a call through S voice it doesn't recognize that there is a work and a cell number for this person? When I say, call John Smith and work, the watch then asks,"which contact I'd like to call" but only lists the cell number. Yet, on my 3 year old Galaxy gear watch it dials the work number immediately without asking me confirm who I want to call. Why does my first generation gear's S voice have more functionality that the gear s2? It makes no sense to me? I'm thinking of returning it until they update the software and hopefully the functionality... Very disappointed...

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[JAWS40]

I agree, it's sad that S voice is so bad that it makes the watch returnable.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[L_E_O]

Ok I'll eat some crow here. Add me to this list. After 2 days, there are 3 things that are screaming "return" at me, and S voice is one of them. I tried to give it the benefit of the doubt, but I went back to the Huawei Watch for a dinner I attended last night, and it just solidified how much better Google Now is.

It's just too slow and limited in functionality. Deal killer...

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N920A using Tapatalk

 

[luisrcastillo]

Ugh, me too. I like this watch but man, S Voice is really pushing my desire to return it

Sent from my SM-N920T using Tapatalk

 

[ReggieReg72]

This is my first smart watch so I wasn't sure what to expect and I have nothing to compare it to.... It is so slow and inconsistent. I will say, it understands what I'm saying with no problem but sending text messages pretty much sucks! Not because it doesn't understand but because it sits there and spins and takes forever to actually send the message..

S Voice is literally the first thing I disable on my phone but for a device like a smart watch I think voice service would be a huge help.

It's not a deal breaker for me at this time but like I said I have nothing to compare the experience to.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[FitzAusTex]

S voice recognizes my voice fine, but I'm getting a lot of "Unfortunately, I can't access the system right now. Please try again later.", for things like "who won the Texas football game yesterday?". For things like "what time is in New York?", it works fine.

 

[ReggieReg72]

Update.. I just tried texting and placing a call and it worked perfectly and was quick... I have no idea what makes this thing slow down at times.. Inconsistent

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[FitzAusTex]

I'm sure that Samsung will stick with S Voice pretty much no matter what, but since we can use Tizen to pretty much fully interact with Gmail, wondering if they wanted to, could Samsung access Google search/Google Now? Or does Google have it locked down?

 

[winpeguy]

Update.. I just tried texting and placing a call and it worked perfectly and was quick... I have no idea what makes this thing slow down at times.. Inconsistent

Is it possible that it needs Data connection to work properly, and slow response is because the phone doesn't have a good data connection?

 

[me23brown]

For me S-Voice has been hit or miss. It just doesn't have the accuracy of Google Now or the functionality. But it is a lot better than on my old Samsung phone.

 

[lvmymoto]

Same experience here. I've had several Android Wear watches at this point, and just got my Moto 360 2 in the mail, and wow is the Google Now better! I'll ask S-Voice, "what's the weather like" tomorrow, and takes a second a pops up. Cool. But then ask, "when is the next Seahawks game" and it spins for 10 seconds and then says it doesn't know! Setting a timer works, but setting a reminder doesn't. Really frustrated with that aspect unfortunately.

 

[AdrianMD]

Agree

 

[sag7392]

So I've been playing with S-voice for a few hours and have found a slight workaround, if you will. Now it's not Google Now, but I managed to get better answers from it by saying "web search whatever". It sometimes delivers what I need and sometimes it doesn't. But this workaround is enough for me. Hell, I rarely used Google Now, in terms of voice search on my Moto 360. I also found saying, " Google whatever " it worked very well...you'd just have to open the results on your device...very similar to some results on my Moto 360. Either way, this works for me. Just thought I'd share this.

And S-voice works better on the S2 than it does on my Note5...not saying it's terrible, but I've found that it just seems to work better.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[JAWS40]

It is with great sadness that I have thrown in the towel and am returning my Gear S2 today. I have been looking forward to its release for three months, but in the end, its functionality just doesn't merit keeping it. How sad is it that I strapped on my 1st generation gear this morning and was happy to have it back. The Gear S2 looks great and has a great interface, but I feel like Samsung focused all of its efforts on making it a fitness tracker and put no emphasis on it being an extension of your phone. If I just wanted a fitness tracker, I would have gotten a Fitbit.
S voice is terrible, and calling or texting from the phone is a nightmare. Also, the watch doesn't know the difference between your contact's home and work number. When I ask it to call my wife at work, it only brings up her cell number. I'm only able to dial her work number if I go to the contacts list and select it. Meanwhile, I can tell my 1st generation gear to call my wife at work and it just dials that number directly. REALLY SAMSUNG???
I'm sooooooo disappointed. I really thought this would be the watch I had been waiting two years for. I can only hope that Samsung has people that read these forums and use the info in here to improve on their devices. How could they get so many things right with the Gear S2 design and yet still fail so miserably on its functionality? It's as if they had a great design team, but then hired a bunch of 5th graders to program the interface with the phone "Sorry, that was mean" .
I'm just so disappointed about how great the design is, but how bad the functionality is. Yes, I know I could hold out for updates and pray that these things get fixed. But, to use a stock market analogy, I feel like I just bought stock in hopes that the value goes up, but I'm not sure how long it will take for that value to increase, or whether it will ever increase at all. I will keep an eye on these forums in hopes that future topics discuss any software updates and whether they make the watch worth buying again. The day that Samsung fixes these issues, I will go out and buy a new Gear S2 immediately. I really feel that Samsung has hit the mark on this watch as far as design, so hopefully, they will continue to support the S2 with apps and software updates and not move on to other things like they did with other devices. I love Samsung devices and have been a loyal customer since I got my Galaxy S3 when they first came out. I now have an S5 and two tablets.
Please fix this Samsung!!!

 

[Pavan Garidipuri]

Just had a software update and S Voice is wayyy better now. It actually feels really fast and doesn't load as long as before. It recognizes regular words well but names can still be a hit or a miss.