Droid X: The Missing Manual

Chapter 14. Controlling the Droid X with Your Voice

You’ll spend a lot of time talking into your Droid X when you make phone calls, certainly. But you can do a lot more with your voice as well. Want to send a text messages, get directions to a city or street address, and visit a website? Rather than having your fingers do the walking, have your voice do the talking, and you can do all that and more.

You do all this using an app built into the Droid X called Voice. It’s simple and straightforward, as you’ll see in this chapter. There’s a related voice app that lets you search the Web using your voice, and you’ll learn all about that as well.

Two Ways to Control the Droid X by Voice

You have two ways to control the Droid X with your voice—using Voice Actions and using Voice Commands. Voice Commands are generally more limited than Voice Actions—you can’t, for example, dictate an email or text message using them, or search the Web. However, you can use Voice Commands to do such things as checking your battery status or looking up a contact, which you can’t do with Voice Actions.

Note

You can only use Voice Actions if you have Android Version 2.2 or higher on your Droid X. To make sure, when you’re at the Home screen or on a pane, press the Menu key, and then select Settings→About Phone, and look under “Android version”. If it’s 2.2 or greater, you’re set. If not, tap System Updates at the top of your screen, and the Droid X should download and install the newest version of the operating ...