Voice recognition is one of those mobile services that has been on the cusp of brilliance for quite a while, yet no-one seems to have it down to a fine art.
Apple's Siri and Google's Voice Search do an ample, if not always reliable, job, but Microsoft has demonstrated how it intends to leapfrog them both with its improved Bing Voice app for Windows Phone.
The company's research department has shown-off a prototype version of a faster, more accurate and more intelligent version of the app, scheduled for launch at a later date.
According to the video demonstration, the new Bing Voice app processes speech so fast, it will stream utterances word-by-word, as they are spoken, rather than wait until the sentence is complete.
Better, faster, smarter
Even in the presence of background noise, so often the bain of voice recognition apps, the new Bing Voice service showed considerable speed and accuracy improvements in Microsoft's tests.
The demonstation showed the phrase "Starbucks in Washington" was recognised by the improved tech in 0.52 seconds, whereas the current version called it "sky in washing machine," and took 1.19 seconds.
Error rates are also down by between 12 and 15 per cent on the new version and, according to the researchers, there's potential for that to improve by another 15 per cent by the time the tech rolls out.
This extra speed and accuracy, along with the word by word streaming, will allow the app to deliver Bing Search results faster than ever before, the company said.
When's i t coming?
The MSFTKitchen demonstration video made no mention of when it might be arriving on the mobile operating system, but Windows Phone 9 sure sounds like a good time, huh?
Until then, or whenever Microsoft decides to grace Windows Phone fans with the tech, check it out for yourself in the video below.
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