If you’ve got an Android 4.0 device or ROM and a burning desire to try out the latest Siri clone, you’re in luck: an XDA Developers member got his or her hands on the APK for Samsung’s S-Voice. This combination of Google’s voice recognition engine and heuristic computing got the lion’s share of the attention for the new version of TouchWiz, which debuted with the Galaxy S III earlier this month.

You’ll need an Ice Cream Sandwich tablet or smartphone, but thankfully not a Samsung one, to try it out. Our quick experimentation shows that it works well enough. As far as utility goes, it’s about as useful as Siri – which is to say that if you give it just the right command and you’re speaking clearly in a low-volume area, it’ll usually give you a vague version of the answer you’re looking for. Currently it seems very inclined to give you the weather and not much else.

The post says that you’ll need to copy the app into your System/App folder and alter the permissions, but I’ve had success with simply installing the app via the standard non-market way. At present it isn’t much better than using Google’s standard voice recognition with search – those of you who were hoping for a “Siri killer” will be disappointed. Here’s hoping that Samsung can improve it before the Galaxy S III’s European release in a couple of weeks.

[via SlashGear]

5 COMMENTS

  1. it’s just an improved vlingo… just try to connect to twitter/facebook and see what app requests permissions 🙂

  2. improved vlingo maybe, but the vlingo app has nowhere near the same features..  and Android had a siri like app before apple created there’s, its called speaktoit assistant, so they can actually sue apple.

  3. i hate it when people say S-voice is a clone of Siri, please note that Siri is just a small step further than the 3 year-old google voice (or galaxy s2’s voice command).

  4. So I tried it on my Xoom, to no avail.. What Am I doing wrong!?, I used Androzip and hit the APK file and nada.. ! oh well..

  5. It is not a clone and Apple does not have the right to sue. Siri was developed by Nuance/Vlingo. They originally intended to release it across major platforms, but Apple paid big bucks to have limited time exclusivity. S-Voice is made by Nuance/Vlingo, just like Siri. Contrary to popular belief, Siri was not developed by Apple and so they hold none of its patents.

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