Voicy is a speech-to-text app that recently made its way into the Windows Phone Store. With this handy app you can say what you want to write, instead of actually writing it and do pretty much whatever you want with the resulted text.
The app supports a large number of languages and it does a pretty good job at transforming spoken words into written ones. It’s not perfect, but it will get it right in the majority of cases, even for complex sentences.
Voicy’s interface is as clean as it gets and its modus operandi, quite simple. At first use, the app will greet you with 100 free recognitions and give you the option to claim them. You can call this a free trial, since every time you use Voicy you’ll consume one recognition and only the 100 times are free. It’s actually a bit deceptive, since the app is listed in the Store as free, and there is no mention of IAPs in its description.
Once you’ve claimed your recognitions, simply press the large microphone icon to dictate. With the resulted text you can do a number of things as multiple options will be displayed. You can copy it (and paste it anywhere you want), send it via email or SMS, search the web or the marketplace and even Wikipedia or IMDb. I see a YouTube option looking very nice, next to the others, but even more shortcuts are welcome. A built-in text editor could also come in handy, especially for larger texts that need to be formatted.
You can change the language at any time from the options menu. There are two recognition profiles you can choose from: Dictation – better suited for longer phrases and Web Search – for search keywords and short phrases.
If you find Voicy useful and run out of recognitions, you can always buy more. The app offers packs containing 1000, 2000 and 10000 recognitions, with prices of $1.49, $2.49 and $8.99, respectively. Purchasing any pack will also disable the adds.
I found Voicy straightforward and easy to use. During my testing, it did a decent job, with the occasional error. It’s true, Cortana includes some of Voicy’s capabilities, but let’s not forget the virtual assistant currently supports a limited number of languages and many people can still make use of apps like this one.
The lack of text formatting options, makes Voicy unequipped to handle larger texts. Nevertheless, it’s still very useful to dictate shorter texts and phrases for messaging purposes as well as online searches.
Give Voicy a try and let us know what you think of the app in the comments section! Or, you can head over to the Pocketmeta forums and join in on some more mobile technology discussion.
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