Slightly following on from the listening to music while riding thread…
I usually ride with earphones in, listening to music through my phone. That means that if I get a call while I’m riding I hear the ringing and I’m often tempted to pull over and check if it’s anything urgent (it almost always isn’t).
Got me thinking that if I could get text messages read aloud through the earphones I could tell the wife to text if she needs me and I could get the message without having to pull over. Now I know that I can set my sat nav up so that it connects to the phone by bluetooth and reads aloud any texts so I guess it must be possible to get an android smartphone to just read out texts as they arrive.
There’s quite a few sms reader apps on Google play, has anybody tried any? I think it would be good to be able to set the volume independantly from the general phone volume and maybe if the message could be repeated to make sure I get it. Also, it would be good if I could get a voice simulator that doesn’t sound like Steven Hawking having a breakdown.
I have one built in to my Nokia C7. The app is called “message reader”
It does exactly what it says on the tin…
However there is no getting away from Steven Hawkins or his “twin sister”… But they have both gotten over their colds.
Is there not something built into the phone? You might have to get creative - I found my solution under the accessibility options of my phone.
On my iPhone, I have set a triple-push of the home button to enable VoiceOver. Once this is on, the phone will read out any incoming notification over my bluetooth connection, using text-to-speech. It tells me the type of message (SMS, facebook, email, etc), who the message is from, and reads the part of the text that is in the notification bubble. If I think it’s important, I can pull over and read the whole message.
Perhaps there’s something similar for the Android phone?
-simon
Struth …
Take some time out, why be a slave to incoming calls/messages? I answer my phone when I’m ready not when the caller is ready. On my time it gets done at my pace 
Read in your best monotonous synthesised voice…
“n e w i n c o m i n g t e x t m e s s a g e. H o n e y q u i c k b u r l g a r s h a v e j u s t b r o k e n i n t o o u r h o m e. S o u n d s l i k e t h e y a r e c o m i n g u p s t a i r s. E n d o f m e s s a g e. N o m o r e m e s s a g e s.”
screetch crash!
meh, no help either way. she’s better off calling the cops.
“Hi Simon, the meeting has been postponed until tomorrow”, twenty minutes in to a three hour ride, was a great message to receive…
-simon
Yeah, I was thinking of messages like Symon’s, or maybe the wife ringing to tell me I need to go to Tesco or there’s nothing to eat.
Usually I hear the phone ringing and only find out what was wanted when I get to my destination, by which time it might be too late and might mean I’ve wasted my trip or i have to head straight back out.
There are loads of free text reader apps on the android market, maybe i’ll just try a few and see which one works best.
Let me know what you find.
I have tried Vlingo on the Android, it has a “SafeReader” setting that reads out your texts, it doesn’t sound like Steven Hawking but does sound a bit depressed! I also sends texts simply by voice recognition, this is not with out problems as I nearly sent a mate “Stay sexy” as a text, which was not quite what I wanted…
One of the popular options (although I’ve not used it more than a few days, as it wouldn’t work through Bluetooth at the time) is Announcify -
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mailboxer.saymyname
As for the voice, easy one there, Ivona -
It’s amazing how natural she sounds.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ivona.tts
