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Voice to text reply to message

jendrush
8 months ago

Is it possible to reply to a text message using voice so that the voice is processed and inserted into the reply instead of choosing a predefined reply? If not, when will this be available? With the presence of Voice Controls, adding such functionality does not seem to be difficult. 

  • +1 8 months ago

    Hello

    You are able to reply to text message using the Voice Phone Assistant. You would select the desired message, and press the upper Right button with the message open. Select Phone Assistant. If you are set this up, this will open your phone assistant on the phone, with Siri, Google Assistant or Bixby. You can then speak you message content and send. 

    Setting Up Voice Assistant on Your Garmin Watch

  • 0 8 months ago

    It wouldn't surprise me if they're using NXP's voice command libraries for the voice command stuff given its supported by the i.MX RT series. Fenixs have historically run these SOCs with the Fenix 7/Pro using the i.MX RT500 and the Fenix 8 most likely using the same again.

    www.nxp.com/.../voice-intelligent-technology-wake-word-and-voice-command-engines:VOICE-INTELLIGENT-TECHNOLOGY

    As a dev it looks it looks like you have to create your own model for the voice to command mapping, so it doesn't appear to support full voice to text conversion yet. That's likely going to require quite a complex model, maybe large enough to need it's own NPU baked into the SOC in order to work. Then again, I'm not a ML engineer, so this may run fine on an M33 core (but doubtful).

    It's also kinda pointless to do full voice to text conversion locally on the watch without an LTE radio given you won't be receiving a text without the phone anyway Smile. Garmin's done the smart thing by offloading the conversion to the phone.

    I'd expect to see local voice to text conversion along with LTE functionality in a couple of years given NXP don't appear to have a suitable wearables SOC for it at this point. That said, the i.MX RT500 is pretty long in the tooth. I'm sure NXP are a good way into the development of what will eventually become the Fenix 9's processor with LTE and all the good stuff.

  • 0 8 months ago in reply to 2529455

    Admittedly, I do not know the technical details of the components as you do, but I expected such a situation by inferring from how the voice options are organized(their separation in the menu). I was just concerned that these are simply learned models, not recognizing everything and only interpreting the text. In truth, I don't mind using the phone's computing power, especially since, as you noted, the watch has to be connected to the phone anyway to send a message at all. As much as I am able to see this functionality in the video I definitely don't like the fact that we can't see the text we enter and we are not 100% sure that the assistant will send it to the right contact.... I would like the option for us to choose a voice in response to a message(where there are predefined ones), then dictate it to the assistant, and after a while it would show us what it recognized, direct the message immediately to that sender to whom we are responding, we would approve and the message would be sent.

  • 0 8 months ago in reply to Garmin-Laurie

    Do you have a video where it is shown how it works? I currently own a Fenix 7 and am considering switching to the Fenix 8. Since I had the Pebble Time I have wanted this functionality, so I was very happy to see that the Fenix 8 will have a microphone. I took a look at the Garmin Singapore profile video - Garmin Venu 2 Plus Voice Functionality. On it you can see how the assistant is used to respond to a message. Does it work the same way on the Fenix 8? I don't like the fact that there, after activating the assistant, we have to say to whom we are sending a message and when we finish dictating we can't see what the assistant has recognized. Thus, what assurance do we have that we are sending a message to the person we want to reply to, and that the message content is exactly what we wanted? 

  • 0 8 months ago in reply to Garmin-Laurie

    Which apps are supported by the Phone Assistant besides text messages? WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook?

  • 0 8 months ago in reply to Garmin-Laurie

    For iPhones, that means either having to unlock the phone first or allowing Siri when phone is locked which is not recommended from security perspective and if you already have the phone out might just as well use it instead of the watch. Could voice option work with Garmin Messenger instead at some point? 

  • 0 8 months ago in reply to Garmin-Laurie

    This doesn't work. The google assistant doesn't know what to do. Even if the message is selected. Is this just a bug?

  • 0 8 months ago in reply to Jannis

    this is also happening for me, and I accidentally assigned it to the shittiest of all, BIXBY by mistake instead of google assistant/gemini.

  • 0 7 months ago in reply to AWNELSON

    Like others, voice to text via the fenix 8 does not work well with Google assistant. There are too many steps involved in using assistant to send a text that the watch cannot process correctly. When I dictate a text it shows up in assistant but requires another command to send the text. To say the process is clunky would be an understatement. For anyone considering buying this watch to use this feature often, like me, you will be disappointed.