Navigating your smartphone

Kritou

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Firstly a disclaimer - although I understand Android phones have a somewhat similar facility I am an iPhone user

I have never had a bike with a WonderWheel and so I have had to stab at the handlebar mounted phone’s screen with a stylus or suitably gloved finger to control it. This is a bit hit and miss, distracting and will probably be illegal soon

Recently I stumbled across an iOS feature called Voice Control, accessed via Settings>Accessibility>Voice Control (this is nothing to do with Siri, although Siri can be used to initially turn on the feature) This brings up a small blue microphone icon top right and from then on there are many plain voice commands you can speak to move around your phone. Examples are “zoom in/out” “swipe left/right/up/down” “take screenshot” “go Home”, “Open Phone”etc

Now, moving to the bottom of the Voice Control page is the sub menu Overlay and this in turn has four sub menus - choose Item Numbers and this will then display small semi translucent numbers adjacent to each tappable icon on your screen, including all those in your preferred third party apps. Simply speak one of these displayed numbers and that icon will be “clicked”

So basically you can sit in font of your iPad/iPhone with your hands in your pockets and operate your device!

All this works very well both in the car and on the bike with my Pocket Earth and Gaia apps and I suppose Scenic, Waze and other Satnav apps will be the same. One particular feature that I am finding useful is the command “take screenshot” as it instantly records data such as position, time and nearby POIs for future reference

Of course talking to your phone on the motorway and from within a helmet is another matter. Initially I used one of the cheap Bluetooth headsets and it worked OK, but I now wear a single AirPod as it pairs seamlessly, the microphone is protected from wind noise and when the power fades it is simply swapped out for the other one. However I guess any Bluetooth intercom or integrated helmet system will work just as well. So far I have only used it tooling around town and have yet to test it in anger at speed. There are several other options of it to explore (including the interesting sounding Customise Commands)


This serendipitous discovery is giving me hours of fun and it’s capabilities might transform the way many of us interact with our phones, both on and off the bike
 

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How cool

Good find Kritou

Does this have any impact on battery life?

zappa
 
Not that I have noticed to date. The recent and pending changes to use of handheld and similar devices will make this feature even more useful - I’m still investigating more microphone options (even b/t hearing aids!) but the Apple AirPods are still the best for me
 
Just found this, what fun :)

My Zumo 550 cradle has just fallen apart and I'm off to France in a couple of weeks, so playing with this to see if it might be the answer, to use my iPhone with bluetooth and Voice control. I've had some mixed results sat at home, I've been using OSMAnd, which has so many options and customisation that things were a bit messy, works great with simple interfaces like Waze and Google maps. I don't have those touch gloves (ohh err), but this does look like it could be very handy. Will try it out on the bike.

Thanks for posting :)
 
Firstly a disclaimer - although I understand Android phones have a somewhat similar facility I am an iPhone user

I have never had a bike with a WonderWheel and so I have had to stab at the handlebar mounted phone’s screen with a stylus or suitably gloved finger to control it. This is a bit hit and miss, distracting and will probably be illegal soon

Recently I stumbled across an iOS feature called Voice Control, accessed via Settings>Accessibility>Voice Control (this is nothing to do with Siri, although Siri can be used to initially turn on the feature) This brings up a small blue microphone icon top right and from then on there are many plain voice commands you can speak to move around your phone. Examples are “zoom in/out” “swipe left/right/up/down” “take screenshot” “go Home”, “Open Phone”etc

Now, moving to the bottom of the Voice Control page is the sub menu Overlay and this in turn has four sub menus - choose Item Numbers and this will then display small semi translucent numbers adjacent to each tappable icon on your screen, including all those in your preferred third party apps. Simply speak one of these displayed numbers and that icon will be “clicked”

So basically you can sit in font of your iPad/iPhone with your hands in your pockets and operate your device!

All this works very well both in the car and on the bike with my Pocket Earth and Gaia apps and I suppose Scenic, Waze and other Satnav apps will be the same. One particular feature that I am finding useful is the command “take screenshot” as it instantly records data such as position, time and nearby POIs for future reference

Of course talking to your phone on the motorway and from within a helmet is another matter. Initially I used one of the cheap Bluetooth headsets and it worked OK, but I now wear a single AirPod as it pairs seamlessly, the microphone is protected from wind noise and when the power fades it is simply swapped out for the other one. However I guess any Bluetooth intercom or integrated helmet system will work just as well. So far I have only used it tooling around town and have yet to test it in anger at speed. There are several other options of it to explore (including the interesting sounding Customise Commands)


This serendipitous discovery is giving me hours of fun and it’s capabilities might transform the way many of us interact with our phones, both on and off the bike

Genius
 
Jut been messing with this. Works coolly. Only issue is as I was explaining to my wife how to use the numbering system, my apps started opening and navigating! Similarly, she could call out a number and it would navigate there...I hope it ends up learning voice recognition (privacy issues again) but works to secure the phone
 
Works great, good find ... although the numbers on a page such as Wordle which features a keyboard are a little overwhelming
 


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