Samsung has literally just taken the wraps off of their new flagship Galaxy S III smartphone, and we have all the details, specs, and hands-on video. One of the many new impressive features is S-Voice, a Siri rival specific to Samsung’s Galaxy S III. With voice actions similar to what we’ve already seen in Google Voice Actions, but taken a step further.

Samsung has improved on Google’s already available voice actions to take on Apple’s Siri with its S-Voice system. Which allows you to unlock the phone with a customizable verbal command, and then instruct it to load apps, set calendar appointments, do searches or other tasks simply by speaking at the phone. “What’s the weather for today?”, “I want to take a picture” and “Cheese!” are all supported. If you’re listening to music, you can tell S-Voice to skip, go back, play and pause, with the Galaxy S III automatically spotting your commands in among the music.

One important feature that is a step above Siri is the fact that with Samsung’s S-Voice you can actually open and launch apps with your voice, not just check the weather and set an alarm. While driving you can launch Spotify to stream music, open Google Maps, and many other things all with S-Voice. This brings total hands-free usage to an entirely different level that Samsung has imagined daily users can truly use and enjoy. Don’t get me wrong, Zooey Deschanel is cute in that Siri commercial, but I want Kate Upton in a Samsung S-Voice commercial then we’ll really be rocking.

Check out all of our Samsung coverage, pictures, videos and everything else from the timeline below. Who wants the Galaxy S III? I know I do!

[device id=2435]

38 COMMENTS

  1. How do they come up with these things? “S”-voice, purple dotted color, goes up and down when talking. What a complete ripoff of Siri.
    Seriously Samsung, how hard is it to hire a designer who can come up with something that at least tries not to look like a copy-paste job.

    •  “S Voice” is continuing the trend of “S-” (S for Samsung) – “S Pen”, “S Beam”, etc. And most voice command apps (Voice Actions, Vlingo, etc) give visible cues like “going up and down” when you’re speaking to them.

      • But CASUALLY also Siri starts with an S. A visible feedback is ok, but really? Purple dots? 

  9. Android has had voice controls long before Apple had Siri… and Vlingo, an app identical to Siri for iOS and Android existed long before Apple brought out the 4S.

    Apple’s done the advertising, and made everyone think voice controls are ‘magical’ so why wouldn’t Samsung capitalize on the trend?

    All Apple does is pump tons of money into a new commercial, and everyone thinks its the best thing ever.. It’s such a joke.

    • Apple created the VoiceOver type of tech during the early 90’s.  On Macs at the time.

      Siri adds a better natural language interpretation than either Apple’s old stuff or Google’s current stuff.  

    • You’re an idiot. Well not really, but check your facts. The iPhone 3GS launched with Voice Control in June 2009. Android 2.2 with froyo which had voice actions launched May 2010. But took AGES to get on most phones. Here is what the 3GS voice control can do: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=726016

      Apple bought Siri in April 2010.

      However, on my old Apple Newton from 1994, I can write on the screen “Lunch with bob on Friday” highlight it, and tap assist; the Newton then creates an appointment on Friday at 12 pm with the contact Bob attached. Sure, it’s not voice, but the Newton did many natural language parsing tasks way back then.

      I’m not saying Apple invented everything, but just that iPhone had voice control before Android did, a year in fact.

      Back then, you could say “Play songs by Air” and it would speak and say “Playing songs by Air” then if you liked a song you could say “play more songs like this” and it would create a genius playlist based on similar types of tracks.

      “Call mum.”
      ‘Home, work, or mobile?’
      “work”
      ‘Calling mum, work’

      And yes Nokias had voice dealing and others, but not the same way. On iPhone you could ask, as you can with Siri, “what can I say?” and it would show examples for what you can say.

    • The point is not so much the technology itself. Of course, it is good news for everybody that Samsung adds voice control to its phones.

      The point is they so often blatantly copy designs from other companies. I’ll write it out in plain text: it’s the purple button with the little dots on the microphone we have a problem with.

      Or maybe it’s a coincidence that Samsung’s designer(s) came up with the same look’n’feel as Apple’s?

    • It is how they contimue to copy the UI graphics that bother me. The Button didn’t have to be purple with the same mic icon. Why copy the look/branding and feel? It demotes their work to Big Mac Big Mick territory. Does everyone in Samsung secretly want an iPhone?

    • “All Apple does is pump tons of money into a new commercial, and everyone thinks its the best thing ever.. It’s such a joke.”
      Man, you are so 90s. That argument about marketing is just BS. How about Samsung making a commercial ad and not showing exactly what phone does? People in the beach, getting married, babies born, …

    • This.

      When the US rebuilt Korea they exported circumcision (male genital cutting) to their shores.

      Now the vast majority of Korean men are mutilated, and hence it is a culture of “fear of shame.”

      No one can innovate out of fear.

  11. Samsung doesn’t have an ounce of innovation in its DNA. This is such a shameful Siri hack that even my grandma would recognize it. Reminds me of the high school punk who puts a Mercedes hood ornament on his Chevy Vega. If you can’t afford the real thing, I suppose this Samsung model is better than anything from LG or HTC. But why not just pony up for the real thing? Samsung has been able to capture 26% of the profits on the mobile market. But the clear leader in everything mobile captured 72% with three phone models. 

  13. Typical Koreans. It’s easier to copy something than to invent something.
    Maybe they have to place Samsung in a dictionary, where it says/means copycats!!!

    • Siri isn’t that innovative either, google voice and galaxy s2’s voice command is much earlier than Siri, although I admit Siri is one step further the 3-year-old google voice search.

  14. Surely you guys could have at least taken better photos. Is the phone or background supposed to be white? Heard of Photoshop?

  16. Looks nice enough. Why should Apple users have all the voice-related fun? Shame about the pentile screen though.

  17. This is an extension of Android’s Voice Commands. Barking commands at a computer has been done for over twenty years now. To say S-Voice is ahead of Siri is naive.

    What Siri does is learn and interpret meaning within context and structure, i.e. artificial intelligence, and then acts on it, if it can. And if it can’t, asks to further clarify your request.

    Example:

    Me: “Is it going to rain today?”

    Siri: “Yes, it’s likely to rain today.”

    [Today’s hourly forecast]

    Me: “What about tomorrow?”

    Siri: “It doesn’t look like it’s going to rain tomorrow.”

    [Weekly forecast]

    Me: “What’s the high temperature supposed to be?”

    Siri: “The high will be 66 degrees.”

    [Weekly forecast]

    Me: “What about today’s high?”

    Siri: “The high will be 73 degrees”

    [Today’s hourly forecast]

    That’s light years beyond just voice commands.

    It’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that Apple will extend Siri’s reach throughout the system and possibly release an A.P.I. so developers can also extend it.

    And as far as the claim of “natural language” Apple released HyperCard in 1986, the scripting language, HyperScript, was a natural language script. All it meant was code/commands could be structured like natural language,

    get the first word in text field “full name” and put it into firstName.

    this isn’t intelligence, it’s parsing trickery.

  18. No, no copying here. Out of 100’s of microphone icons they choose the same as Apple’s.

    Clearly, they want people to associate it with Siri on the iPhone, even if it’s not as good.

  19. The Ace outsells the II and now number three. Something is bound to stick. This GS3 makes model number 25 released in the past twelve months… Jobs was right, Apple was five-years ahead of the competition and the way the Koreans are banging out model after model, they’re bound to catch up; just by the sheer number of models or begin taking orders for your very own personalized edition.

  20. Why would you like to launch Spotify when you can not say “Play that song” in Spotify? I mean, is nice to be able to launch, but you need more integration into 3rd party apps to make that a real useful feature. Maybe it can help is you have, say 300 apps in 50 folders.

    And why, why make the app looks exactly just like Siri? Same color? Is that really necessary?

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