Los Angeles — At the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), back in June, Steve Jobs shared the main features of iOS 5 and said that there would be many other features than what was being highlighted. In the latest beta release of the iOS 5 for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch is on the way, and a few new screen-captures hint that iOS 5, just released in beta to developers, may be getting that speech-to-text functionality we have been hearing about for months now.
Although the upcoming speech-recognition features are not operational yet in the iOS 5 beta, but according to a report by 9to5mac, a reliable source provided them with a screenshots displaying this new functionality.
As you can see in the images below, the microphone icon appears next to the space bar on the iOS keyboard that is used throughout the operating system. When a user touches that microphone icon, it opens the speech recognition interface that you see in another image below.
A new button appears in the familair iOS keyboard
The mic screen overlays the keyboard
Graphics courtesy 9to5 Mac and MacRumors
The report states that this software is in the beta testing stage and may or may not appear in the official release of iOS 5. The source also reveals to the website that as of now this feature is made available just for the iPhones and iPod Touch.
According to 9to5Mac reports, the procedure to activate this function appears to be quite straightforward (when the new feature is available) simply by clicking on the microphone icon and talking. Upon activation, a screen will appear displaying a mic where the textbox remains as long as one is talking. Upon completion, the spoken text will appear in the text field.
However, 9to5Mac’s source claims that speech recognition software, which is currently in beta testing, is “only planned” for the iPhone and iPod Touch at the moment, but iPad support could be on the horizon.
Not surprisingly, the secretive Apple is trying to hide the existence of the new features. PC Magazine’s Leslie Horn indicates that rumor has it the next iPhone could take speech-to-text to the next level with fully-integrated voice control. Horn reports that a feature called Assistant could use information stored on the phone to “satisfy verbal requests” and might even talk back to you. The feature is expected to be based on Siri, a voice search App Apple acquired in 2010.