First impression
Nothing has expanded its function to dictate and have what you say transcribed with the help of AI.
Essential Voice calls its new AI feature for dictating text Nothing. You already had the option to dictate text in Nothing’s phones, but the function is now significantly expanded.
You access the function by holding down the Essential button on the side of the Nothing mobile and then start speaking, or via the keyboard where there is a voice button.
The phone then acts as a dictaphone and records what you say, which is saved in Nothing’s AI app Essential Space. What you say is also transcribed into text. According to Nothing, it’s not just about translating word for word, but really interpreting what you say and turning it into written language, without pauses, repetitions and humming. And it is perfectly possible to speak Swedish. Over 100 languages are supported, and the function automatically detects which language I speak.
When I try to speak a paragraph, I really get a small text without colloquialisms in Swedish, even if it slips with an “ehm” at the end. I also get a point summary and an even shorter summary as variants, and if I want I can listen to the spoken text.
Essential Voice can also be used to translate into other languages. I try to start with “Translate this into English” and then speak a paragraph. In the Essential app, I get it as text in several variants as before, and now in both English and Swedish.
As I said, Essential Voice is also available as a button on the keyboard. I try going into the browser and saying “go to mobil.se“. Here I notice it’s still an early version, because for some reason it interprets that I spoke Spanish. At least I can see that it interprets it as me wanting to google what I said.
You can also create shortcuts to phrases, links and the like. You simply tell Essential Voice “When I say My email address, write elias@mobil.se”, and it creates a rule that prints the email address when I use the phrase. I notice that I can also edit the address, because it interpreted my “at” as 1.
Nothing’s layout in Essential Space, where everything sort of ends up in a bucket, is for me very messy and the information about my email address is mixed up with my dictated texts. I also find a to-do item that I didn’t ask for, but that the AI has at some point interpreted what I just spoke as. It can be a matter of taste how best to organize your information.
When Essential Voice now launches, it will come to Nothing Phone 3 and Nothing Phone 4a Pro first. Soon it will also come to the Nothing Phone 4a.
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