Sonalight Text By Voice – Completely Hands-free Texting While You Drive
I’m just going to lay it out here. Despite my suffering from narcolepsy, I do a lot of driving. And since I’m always running late, I tend to get on the road 1st, before sending texts to friends (while stopped at red lights) that I’m on my way. I’ve tried using Google’s Voice Search actions for composing texts while driving but the amount of attention and physical screen presses required to shoot off a quick text was just too dangerous to use safely.
Thankfully, I came across Sonalight’s Text By Voice app in the Market and I have to say — I am impressed. I know what you’re thinking, there are a handful of great voice-to-text apps in the Market, some that even act as personal assistants. But once again, those require too much attention from eyes and fingers to use safely while driving. Text By Voice works a little different.
Once you launch the app, it will run in the background reading incoming SMS messages aloud and listening for the appropriate phrase to compose an SMS. Simply saying, “Text by voice,” will launch the app (without ever having to touch the screen) and you follow the spoken voice cues to respond or compose texts. The coolest part is that Text By Voice is always listening. That means even when your phone is sleeping, you can still send out texts without ever having to unlock your phone. Check out the tutorial video provided by the developers to see it in action.
The app, while free, has a pricing model that could turn-off some. You get 20 SMS messages free every month. After that, you can add 50 more for that never expire for $2 using in-app billing. Or you can opt for unlimited messages for 1 month that will run $2. A full year of Text By Voice, that will run you $20. You can try out Sonalight Text By Voice for free right now in the Android Market.