Speech-to-text changed, is not as good now

[WolfStock]

(EDIT: Originally I said "text-to-speech", but I meant "speech-to-text".)

I have a Samsung S9, with Verizon, on Android 10. I use the Google speech-to-text engine.

A couple of months ago something changed - there was some software update that really made the speech-to-text function a lot worse. I'm not sure if it's a Google thing, a Verizon thing, a Samsung thing, an Android thing, or what. Pretty sure it's the latter - Android, as it affects all the apps.

Specifically - here's the new problematic behavior:

• Very often when I speak a sentence, there's a bug that causes the sentence to be duplicated. E.g. I'll say "I'll be home in 15 minutes", but the text that shows up is "I'll be home in 15 minutes; I'll be home in 15 minutes"
• There's also a new bug where it doesn't translate punctuation correctly. E.g. I'll say "period" at the end of the sentence - sometimes it changes this to '.', but sometimes it just leaves it as "period".
• In general it's just not as good at detecting what I'm saying, as it used to be - getting words wrong more often.
• Often times it just doesn't detect anything at all - just sit there dumbly and time out as if I didn't say anything, and time out, even though I have good internet connection.
• Or often it'll just fail with a double-beep for some reason, even though I have good internet connectivity.
• The functionality to be able to switch back and forth between manual typing and text-to-speech is now gone. Now once I start typing, the microphone icon no longer shows up, and thus I can't switch to speech. (This is a desirable thing to have - e.g. to speak a sentence, go back and correct a word via keyboard, then continue speaking the rest; this is no longer do-able)

Anyone know what update may have broken this, and if there's anything that can be done about it?

Thanks.

 

[puppykickr]

Personally, it has NEVER worked right at all for me- absolutely none of it.

After many hours of fruitless aggrevation, I learned that it was much more rewarding to get a keyboard that worked better.

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/dev.patrickgold.florisboard/

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/rkr.simplekeyboard.inputmethod/

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.pocketworkstation.pckeyboard/

That whole thing about speaking to text, then having to go back and type it out manually anyway to fix 'mistakes' is very frustrating to me.

I found myself saying, "Why am I doing everything twice? Is this really helpful at all?"

 

[WolfStock]

Personally, it has NEVER worked right at all for me- absolutely none of it.

After many hours of fruitless aggrevation, I learned that it was much more rewarding to get a keyboard that worked better.

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/dev.patrickgold.florisboard/

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/rkr.simplekeyboard.inputmethod/

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.pocketworkstation.pckeyboard/

That whole thing about speaking to text, then having to go back and type it out manually anyway to fix 'mistakes' is very frustrating to me.

I found myself saying, "Why am I doing everything twice? Is this really helpful at all?"

Thanks for the tips, though I generally have found speech-to-text a pretty useful function - certainly more efficient than typing when doing a lot of text; even with the recent changes that made it more crappy. So I plan to keep using it either way; just hoping that someone can enlighten as to what's changed to make it worse, and perhaps how it can be improved.

 

[mikedt]

I have a Samsung S9, with Verizon, on Android 10. I use the Google text-to-speech engine.

A couple of months ago something changed - there was some software update that really made the text-to-speech function a lot worse. I'm not sure if it's a Google thing, a Verizon thing, a Samsung thing, an Android thing, or what. Pretty sure it's the latter - Android, as it affects all the apps.

Specifically - here's the new problematic behavior:

• Very often when I speak a sentence, there's a bug that causes the sentence to be duplicated. E.g. I'll say "I'll be home in 15 minutes", but the text that shows up is "I'll be home in 15 minutes; I'll be home in 15 minutes"
• There's also a new bug where it doesn't translate punctuation correctly. E.g. I'll say "period" at the end of the sentence - sometimes it changes this to '.', but sometimes it just leaves it as "period".
• In general it's just not as good at detecting what I'm saying, as it used to be - getting words wrong more often.
• Often times it just doesn't detect anything at all - just sit there dumbly and time out as if I didn't say anything, and time out, even though I have good internet connection.
• The functionality to be able to switch back and forth between manual typing and text-to-speech is now gone. Now once I start typing, the microphone icon no longer shows up, and thus I can't switch to speech. (This is a desirable thing to have - e.g. to speak a sentence, go back and correct a word via keyboard, then continue speaking the rest; this is no longer do-able)

Anyone know what update may have broken this, and if there's anything that can be done about it?

Thanks.

I've got two Samsung phones here, Galaxy S7 and Galaxy Note20 Ultra. And these have only got "Samsung text to speech engine", nothing Google. And they both work no problems.

Suggest you try using Samsung text to speech instead.

 

[WolfStock]

I've got two Samsung phones here, Galaxy S7 and Galaxy Note20 Ultra. And these have only got "Samsung text to speech engine", nothing Google. And they both work no problems.

Suggest you try using Samsung text to speech instead.

I'll try that, though right off the bat I can tell it won't help most of the problems.. I tried doing a test, and it double-beeped at me as failed on the second try (I'm on good Wi-Fi). Also the problem where the microphone icon isn't there when using the keyboard still exists. (it can be brought back, but only when exiting out of the keyboard first; something new and an extra step added)

Most or all of the problems aren't actually the text-to-speech engine, which is something on the back end I believe, but more an application thing - e.g. the application fails to even invoke the engine (the beep failure), or it accidentally invokes it twice (duplicate text).

 

[mikedt]

I'll try that, though right off the bat I can tell it won't help most of the problems.. I tried doing a test, and it double-beeped at me as failed on the second try (I'm on good Wi-Fi). Also the problem where the microphone icon isn't there when using the keyboard still exists. (it can be brought back, but only when exiting out of the keyboard first; something new and an extra step added)

Most or all of the problems aren't actually the text-to-speech engine, which is something on the back end I believe, but more an application thing - e.g. the application fails to even invoke the engine (the beep failure), or it accidentally invokes it twice (duplicate text).

So is the problem with TEXT TO SPEECH or SPEECH TO TEXT? Bare in mind these are completely opposite things.

 

[WolfStock]

So is the problem with TEXT TO SPEECH or SPEECH TO TEXT? Bare in mind these are completely opposite things.

Oh shoot - I did mean speech-to-text. Thanks. Fixed.