Current State of Android Dictation Apps?

[griz8791]

On my old Windows Mobile phone I had a paid application that would allow me to dictate and save fairly short mp3s or wavs which I would then e-mail to my secretary. She would then transcribe it using a foot pedal and a program that recognized various standard types of sound files. I want to find the same kind of application for the Droid, but apparently nothing exists yet that offers everything I need.

The critical requirements are pause/resume, save the file someplace where I can get to it with an e-mail program, and result in either a standard sound file or something that can be converted to a standard sound file.

Dictosyl unquestionably has the best interface but founders on its business model. You don't need pause/resume with Dictosyl because it's voice activated and you can actually see it stop recording when you stop talking. Unfortunately, they apparently make their money off the transcription so they hide the sound files someplace on the phone where you can't find them and then charge you a monthly fee for the capability to be able to send them to your secretary.

"Voice Recorder," "Droid Record," and "Rehearsal Assistant" do what they're supposed to do but they don't have pause/resume recording. You can't do even quasi-serious dictation without pause/resume.

Livo Recorder Pro has pause/resume but, like almost all of these Android-compatible products, saves the audio as a "3gp" file. My secretary's computer won't play these at all. I found a free conversion program but her spyware program doesn't like it and keeps uninstalling it.

I have the impression from threads elsewhere on this forum that you can create MP3s and WAVs with an Android device, but it costs money for a developer to license the necessary file formats. Fine, I'll pay my fair share of that development cost. I think I'd pay up to $50 U.S. on a one-time basis for an application that has pause/resume and saves the file as something an ordinary human being can access and transcribe.

Sorry to be impatient, but this is really frustrating. I need this to be a real device that plays well in the real world with other devices and standard file formats, not a second-string junior varsity product that can't create standard files.

Understand that I am not attacking the Droid OS. I like the device very much and have exactly zero interest in using a Blackberry. I am just complaining that with 20,000 apps on the Android market you would think somebody would already have put something like this together.

[griz8791]

Lest anyone think I have unreasonable expectations:

Yoho Voice Recorder 1.80 review and downloads for Windows Mobile phone - MobileTopSoft.

Ironically, this Pocket PC app came up third in the search results when I googled "android voice activated recorder." It saves wavs in 5 different compression ratios and e-mails the resulting files. And they only want $1.99 for it. I'd pay up to $50 to have something like this on the Droid.

[Backnblack]

Ask them to develop one for Android.

[griz8791]

Ask them to develop one for Android.

Good call. I'm doing it right now.

[griz8791]

Here's another one. Looks like this might be the successor to the product I linked in my second post above. As Backnblack suggested, I e-mailed them asking about Android development.

Pocket PC Audio Recorder

[thehotcops]

Try Evernote. It's pretty awesome.

[dylanthecat]

Evernote does not have pause/resume, and it uses the .amr format for its audio files.

If you install Quicktime your assistant should be able to hear the 3gp files, I believe.

[griz8791]

Turns out LivoPro has pause/resume. Now if I could just get them to map that function to the camera button . . .

Its "amr" files come out on the other end as 3gp files, which she is converting to mp3s with a free converter. A 375kb 3gp file on the phone came out to 5 MB on the medium quality conversion setting, so we definitely want to be emailing them as 3gps and converting them on her end after they arrive.

Quicktime would be fine except to transcribe them she uses a foot pedal to do pause/resume, forward, back, etc., and it doesn't recognize 3gps. Thus the need to convert.

I have cooled down and apologize for the obnoxious tone of my original post.

[GunnySpook]

Griz, any progress on your search?

I have a similar need.....

The Gunny

[griz8791]

Gunny, my business partner and I settled on Livo Pro. The one feature that sets it apart from the competition is that it has record pause/resume. At the time I started this thread Livo was the only recorder that had this. We solved the 3gp problem by having the secretaries download and install a free converter.

At this point it meets the need. I e-mailed the dev to ask about voice activation and mapping pause-resume to the camera button. He replied almost immediately that they were already working on voice activation and that the idea of pausing-resuming with the camera button was intriguing. But that was about a month ago and there haven't been any updates. From their website it appears they have a lot of projects going and this isn't one of the big ones.