Apple yesterday announced the new iPhone 4S with the new voice assistant feature called Siri. Siri on iPhone 4S lets you use your voice to send messages, schedule meetings, place phone calls, and more. Ask Siri to do things just by talking the way you talk. Siri understands what you say, knows what you mean, and even talks back. Siri is so easy to use and does so much, you’ll keep finding more and more ways to use it.
Note that Siri was not fully developed by Apple, it was a standalone third party app in App Store and later it was pulled back and then came to be acquired by Apple. Now it’s going to be built-in to iPhone 4S. Read an earlier review about Siri Assistant which was published by PCMag one and a half year ago.
Well when the Siri was announced, the very first app I got in my mind was Vlingo. Vlingo has been providing the same features for quite a long time now for all the major platforms including iPhone, Android, Symbian, Blackberry OS and Windows Phone. Vlingo was the paid app for iPhone until yesterday when Siri was announced. But now when Apple is going to ship the Siri bundled with the iOS, Dave Grannan, President & CEO, Vlingo has announced that the Vlingo for iPhone will be the free app for iPhone users with full of its features.
When Google Voice Actions came out, we felt it was unfair to ask our users to continue to pay for our application. We wanted them to be “free to compare.” We feel the same way about our iPhone product, and have pushed a new version to the App Store that will enable the full Vlingo functionality at no cost. Note this will be available as soon as Apple approves this price change. To those of you who have supported Vlingo over the last three years on the iPhone platform, many of whom paid for the service – we owe you an incredible amount of thanks. We know that this decision will upset some of you, and we can only ask that you apply the same standard to applications that you do to the phones they power. In the same way that the release of a new phone usually coincides with a price decrease of the older model, we feel it is time to take a step forward into “what’s next” in mobile voice. We hope that you continue to find value in our Virtual Assistant, and hope that you are excited to join us as we set out on this next phase of our journey this fall.
As appeared from the quoted text by the CEO Vlingo, they have something “Next Phase” this fall.
Many might question why we would choose iOS to launch this new product as Apple prepares to make a big splash with new native functionality. Truthfully it was a question we thought about deeply ourselves. The last few years Apple has continued to surge past its competitors by delivering products that technically beat user expectations. So why would we try to compete? The answer is simple. Vlingo delivers choice that you simply cannot get from these “OS integrated” options.
Last year when Google launched Voice Actions we knew it was a great product yet millions of people have chosen Vlingo because of the differentiated services and versatility that go well beyond Google’s solution.
More video for Vlingo here.
Download
For now you can get the Vlingo for your iPhones very free of cost. Download Vlingo fro iTunes.
You have an other choice of Dragon Go already free in App Store for the same purpose.
[source Vlingo Blog]
