Pedln, I have returned with the results of my "research," which was somewhat dulled by my forgetting the i phone at home hahashaa but my friend has a new 4G one and so we used that. The program downloads in seconds, and it's free.
Results were interesting. My friend does not speak loudly and/or enunciate. It got my speech perfectly, we initially spun it on the table then picked it up, but it was unsure of many of her words. Accuracy for what I said was about 99 percent, but I WAS projecting; hers, it got most of it: you could make out the gist. When we then held it and passed it back and forth hers improved dramatically, in fact she loves it and when she found out that not only could you put that text in email (she hates to type) you can also copy it and save it in the notes area OR paste it online, she was hooked. When she discovered that she CAN correct the few errors it made with the little keyboard, she was in heaven.
She said, before she was hooked, I wonder what it would do with Shanghai? I said let's give it a go. She said I'm sitting here in Shanghai, China, and looking forward to going to Thailand. I said and Cairo and Paris. And it got all the cities perfectly. When she realized what that meant for travel email she was over the moon impressed. haahhaaha
Then we (being only 2 people) placed it flat on the table and did not move it, and simulated a conversation of 4 people. It was Panera's and incredibly loud. The recording was unfazed and the noise did not come up and did not affect what it typed. I would speak, she would answer, I would move to the left seat, leaving the iphone on the table facing her, and speak as person number 2, she would answer, I would move to the right seat, as person number 3 she would answer. Perhaps we should have spun it around like a game, but we did not.
I looked like a fool, but it did work, amazingly, picking up everything said but again faithfully recording the way she DOES pronounce words. But 4 people could speak and respond (I initially thought, and still do, that short sentences are the best), and it could be passed for reading.
That was a simulation of 4 "people" speaking in their turn. I don't know what would happen if everybody spoke at once. We do think, that instead of leaving it on the table where the microphone faces only one person, it would be better if, say, the iphone were passed first to one than the second person and then that conversation passed for reading, and the next two people responded or recorded or whatever order: whoever wanted to speak. The novelty of it is wonderful and it would be great fun: a great conversation piece.
People who are extremely quiet or who sort of speak with the clenched jaw type of thing would be perfectly understandable if they talked into it like a real phone. And there's nothing wrong with people enunciating, either.
It actually was a lot of fun, and it would be a simple way for somebody to know what was being said. I will try with a roundtable of people next Sunday. As it turned out today I could have done it, fun unexpected company, but I just found the i phone in the farm truck late this afternoon.
