S-voice problems

[jneusch]

I know that S-voice is problematic but I used it with a lot of success on my Note 2. Mainly for text messaging. Moving to the S4 nothing has changed with my contacts.

I have my wife listed in my contacts as 'first name' Wife 'last name'. I could say: text my wife. . . and S-voice would send a text, read her reply and ask me if I wanted to reply. All done by voice.

On the S4 when I do the same thing S-voice tells me there is no one in my contact list by the name of wife. I have also tried this with others as well with no success. I don't understand what changed or what I can do to fix it.

I know I can use Google to speak a text but there are issues with that too. It doesn't use my BT mic and road noise can make it very inaccurate. You also have to interact with the screen, which is not safe.

Has anyone been able to solve this issue? I have cleared S-voice data and cache and started it over, but I got the same result. Any help is appreciated.


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[jneusch]

After 227 views and no responses I feared that either no one uses S-Voice in this way or no one knows the answer. After further research I have discovered a work around.

You must add the contact a second time on the phone, then 'join' the contacts into one. I keep all my contacts in Google. So what I did was I took the people I text the most and added them to the internal phone contact list, then merged them with the 'join contacts' feature in contact settings. This will not work if you save the second contact to the SIM card because you cannot merge SIM contacts with Google contacts for some reason.

I can now tell S-Voice to text my wife, or use her first name and it work work like it is supposed to. I also contacted Samsung and explained the problem. They are going to send it to the software team. Especially since it works right on the Note 2.

I hope this helps anyone else who might run into this in the future.

 

[YankeeMike]

How do you like the S4 coming from the Note2? I love the N2 and concerned about S4 glitchness.

 

[PaulWog]

Overall I'm just pretty fed up with S Voice. In theory it's good. Sitting at home it's great. But once you get in the car and you can't use your hands (ex. you're on the highway and traffic is relatively heavy), it can be completely unreliable when you need it in a snap.

My girlfriend's name is Kristin, and it cannot recognize it no matter how I pronounce it. Usually it will say "There is no one in your contact list called Chris one zero". I had to re-enter her in as "Kris" instead. :-/

Just too many problems with S Voice to list off... it's kind-of sad to be honest... it's a huge selling point for me to have nice voice control. Can't even figure out how to have the screen off while S Voice is still functioning.

 

[FishenFool]

Overall I'm just pretty fed up with S Voice. In theory it's good. Sitting at home it's great. But once you get in the car and you can't use your hands (ex. you're on the highway and traffic is relatively heavy), it can be completely unreliable when you need it in a snap.

My girlfriend's name is Kristin, and it cannot recognize it no matter how I pronounce it. Usually it will say "There is no one in your contact list called Chris one zero". I had to re-enter her in as "Kris" instead. :-/

Just too many problems with S Voice to list off... it's kind-of sad to be honest... it's a huge selling point for me to have nice voice control. Can't even figure out how to have the screen off while S Voice is still functioning.

I can't stand S Voice either. When it does understand call kim, it is way too slow at actually doing it and it gives only onscreen notification of what it is doing. I am in the process of trying other voice assistants and I'm currently working with Dragon to see how I like it.

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[Reciprocal]

I can't stand S Voice either. When it does understand call kim, it is way too slow at actually doing it and it gives only onscreen notification of what it is doing. I am in the process of trying other voice assistants and I'm currently working with Dragon to see how I like it.

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Have you tried just using Google Now's voice search? I've found it to be better than S Voice at recognizing names and commands.

 

[robc234]

S voice on my galaxy s4 does not work at all for me. Every time I try to use it, it either freezes up and does nothing or doesent even recognise even its basic commands. To me it is useless. I have tried all the tips i have found on the internet but none seem to work. Any help would be appreciated.

btw... I did get an android update today so i am runnung 4.2.2 on a sprint sphl-720

 

[TheJefusWrench]

So, coming to the S4 from a Droid 3 (the slider kind I'm pretty upset about how this thing works with a headset. I spend a lot of time with no network coverage but still have phone coverage. S Voice has to have a data network to work. Also, I'm having the same problem as jneusch.

With my Motorola Droid 3 and my Motorola bluetooth headset all I had to do was push the button on the headset, tell it what to do, and it would do it; no network, no searches; just making stuff happen.

S Voice sucks for this purpose; way too slow, it relies on network coverage, doesn't recognize my contacts (WTF?), and I usually have to mess with the screen eventually to get it to do anything.

 

[mhunter6378]

Yep i went through the exact same problem described - S Voice couldn't find some of my contacts. It would find some and not others. If I had it search / locate a contact it could find them but if I tried to have S Voice call that same contact it "couldnt" find them, really weird. Searched endlessly for answers and didnt find many. Disabling S Voice is one work around. Once S Voice is disabled voice dialing is handled natively by google dialer. Works well for voice initiated calls over bluetooth but is limited to dialer functions and nothing more. As you pointed out Google Now handles calls pretty well but mic does not function over bluetooth. There is an app that is suppose to make this function work but I couldnt get it to work properly for me. The one resolution I found that worked for me was to delete my contacts and then add them back, problem solved and S Voice recognized all my contacts again. In my case it was easy as all I had to do was remove my google account and then add it back (I keep all my contacts synced in my google account ). Depending on how you have your contacts stored it may be easy to remove them and then add them back as in my case. If not, hopefully someone will offer a better solution for you. Good luck, hope this helps.

 

[veggie59]

Yes very frustrating. I have used my Plantronics BT headset with a few different phones. It pairs to the S4 but it has problems with using the S voice to make calls. I thought it was because I had a pin lock on the S4., but removing it made no difference.

 

[Jaax]

Hi there,

I've noticed the contacts S Voice doesn't recognize are the ones on which I've marked a default number.

Is it the same for you ?

 

[FishenFool]

Try Dragon instead.

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[Viennaeagle]

I just had the same problem and when I took off my wifes number as the default it worked again.

 

[PuterPro]

Just a quick 2 cents worth ... and a possible answer.

I was going nuts with S-Voice on my new T-mob S-4. Wouldn't recognize my Wife's name no matter HOW I said it. Totally garbled virtually everything else. I was beside myself since I do a LOT of driving and had come to rely on the voice function in my S2, where it worked PERFECTLY. (I use a Plantronics Bluetooth in ear headset.)
Since I'm rooted, I "Froze" it in Titanium backup so that the default Voice search in Android 4.2.2 would become active.
STILL wasn't right. Really bad, and now wouldn't speak in my ear, only through the phone's speaker at a very low level, almost un-hearable in a quiet room, certainly no good for the car!
NOW I was mad (well, my Mom would say I'm not a dog so I must be ANGRY... LOL!).
I un-Froze it and tried again. No Joy.
After scouring the net, I found the answer (well, worked for me, VMMV) - Just go to Settings --> App Manager --> ALL Apps --> Scroll down and click on S-Voice --> Clear Data.
It resets it back to default, you have to agree to the License, etc, but after that it started to work FLAWLESSLY!!!

Hope this helps some other poor soul!
PuterPro

 

[Wilhelm Sorban]

Unfortunately the above post didn't solve my problems, thanks tough.
I came here because I had the same issues, no matter how I say it, it wouldn't recognize my wife's name.
Also, when I ask for the weather in another city that where my location is, it will recognize it, but still show me the weather of my current location :/

 

[lt4buckeyes]

I had the same problem. S-Voice recognized my contacts until I set a default number...i.e. "Mobile" for texting. Now it doesn't even recognize the contact in my address book. I removed the default and it now recognizes the contact.

Another fix that worked was to change the type of phone number to "MMS" in the contacts....and it recognizes the contact again even when the default is set. This has to be a bug, because that makes no sense at all.

I hope someone has a solution, because I just want things to work correctly...and BTW, I am a long standing iPhone user and SIRI NEVERscrewed up.

 

[blueyzfr6]

I wish there was a way to teach S Voice your voice. My fiance name is Michele( 1 "L") when I say "Text Michele..." it says "There is No Michelle.." I wish I could could click on the contact and say "Michele" is "Michelle". It would be nice if you could read a couple sentences, so S-Voice can understand your accent.

 

[nickgalaxys4]

I don't use s-voice I use Google now way better and faster.

 

[tomatron56]

You can teach it to recognize a name by going to the persons contact, then edit, then go to add another field and click on phonetic name. There you can type in a first name it does recognize, which will then lead it to pronounce the two names the same way. For example, my gfs name is Kristine but it only recognizes Christine. So I typed Christine into the phonetic first name field which allowed Kristine to now be recognized.

- - - Updated - - -

You can teach it to recognize a name by going to the persons contact, then edit, then go to add another field and click on phonetic name. There you can type in a first name it does recognize, which will then lead it to pronounce the two names the same way. For example, my gfs name is Kristine but it only recognizes Christine. So I typed Christine into the phonetic first name field which allowed Kristine to now be recognized.

 

[kellerbl]

This is my 6th smartphone and the only one that will not make a call via bluetooth while I'm driving. Even my dumb phones could do that. What really makes me mad is that when I say "call Brion myLastname home 1" (which is what I have to say with prior phone), I have it say "I found 9 Brian myLastname entries in your address book. ... choose from the following 3: Ellen myLastname, Daniel myLastname, Matthew myLastname". It should clearly know that the family members with the same last name are not me - their first names are clearly not the same as the name it spoke back to me; and why does it seem to want to me use the screen to figure it out when I'm driving. It seems to recognize the names fine, but it has trouble looking them up in my contacts for some reason. I have had this phone for 3 months and I have been successful only once in getting it to make a call without using the screen and my hands. I took it into the Verizon store and they claimed I needed to update to a newer Bluetooth speakerphone for my car that supported the latest version of Bluetooth, but after spending another $100 it doesn't do anything different than my old device. Did I mention that I was mad?