Nokia Voice Command is a standard feature on my Nokia N97 and lets me voice-dial and control a few other apps that came standard on my device.  Voice Command works well with the apps for which it was designed, but there is no way to tweak Voice Command to manipulate additional apps.

That’s where Voice Launcher from UK-based Speereo comes in.  This $4.99 (USD) app for Symbian OS, S60 3.x and S60 5.0 devices allows me to use my voice to launch any app or go to any web page. I did not need to train the app to know how I speak, but I did apply a few tricks to increase the accuracy of its recognition engine.

Speereo Voice Launcher comes ready to launch four pre-defined apps and three web pages.

I like the organization of the interface — one tab for all the apps you want to launch, another for all the web pages. Speereo Voice Launcher comes pre-configured to launch four popular apps and two web pages (www.cnn.com and www.weather.com).  The top line of each entry indicates the word or phrase you should say; the second line  (in parentheses) tells you what the command will do.

The preconfigured speech commands are merely the names of the apps, but you are free to choose your own and have some fun. How about My Peeps to open your contacts list or Equals What? for the calculator.

To use Speereo Voice launcher, just press and hold the designated speech key while you speak one of the commands. The default speech key is the * key — I wanted to change it to a key that’s available without sliding out the keyboard on the Nokia N97.

You decide which one or two keys will trigger the voice recognizer.

I decided to use the Increase Volume key to trigger Speereo Voice Launcher. You have the option of designating a two-key combination if you want.

With the speech key configured it was time to test the speech recognition. The Speereo recognition engine does not depend on prior knowledge of individual speakers, so you do not need to train it by reading a lot of phrases. Whatever you type in as a command phrase is accepted and used. You need to take care in the phrases you choose, though. For example, you are asking for trouble if you want to say Contacts to launch your contacts app and Compacts to open a web page of legal definitions. Speereo’s engine is good, but it’s not magic. When testing the app using a Bluetooth headset the recognition engine sometimes confused contacts with CNN. The utterance “CNN” seems a bit of a challenge because so much of the vocalization is not voiced — so I decided to change the phrase to “CNN news”".

I changed the launch phrase from "CNN" to "CNN news" to improve accuracy.

Changing launch phrases is easy, just open the options screen for the app or web site, then type in a new speech command. I also changed the contacts speech command to contacts book and had no more trouble with accuracy.

Web pages are a voice command away.

Adding new apps is also easy with Speereo Voice Launcher. Just use the add page and you will see a menu of every installed app on your Nokia, including I might add a lot of helper apps you may not even realize are installed. I now have a voice command to launch Pocket Radar.

Add a voice command to any app installed on your Nokia.

Ready to radar on my voice command

If you like Nokia Voice Command but wish you could use it for more apps, check out Speereo Voice Launcher. And then have a little fun deciding how you want to talk to your Nokia.

And, if you need more information about this app, a user manual is available for download from the publisher.