iKnew something was missing... and iFound proof
It's always nice to receive validation that you're not just blowing smoke up people's... ahem, noses... A recent poll showed that there's some truth to my previous blog post about the iPhone lacking speech recognition.
Take a look at this nice evaluation of consumer satisfaction with the iPhone. Amid all the glowing feedback about the integration of phone, iPod, and web browsing, and the grumbling about the speed of AT&T's network and the lack of applications, is an interesting nugget: "When we asked about additional iPhone features they’d like to have, owners pointed to voice recognition (15%) as the number one thing missing from their iPhone, followed by personalizing features (13%) and GPS (13%)."
Of course, temper that with the fact that almost nine-in-ten owners said they'd recommend the phone to a colleague. One could argue that speech recognition is not yet a make-or-break feature for phones. Then again, you would have said that about most of the iPhone features until they were popularized and truly designed with the user in mind. Speech is at a similar point -- clunky implementations impress no one, while well-polished use of speech can take away the interface barriers that prevent people from using their phone's features more. And carriers love anything that increases ARPU... I'd buy more ring tones if I didn't have to wade through 7 menus to figure it out each time!
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