Speech to text option? (#1 desire for development)

MuditaOS
21

This is a very narrow-minded and judgmental reply.

We don’t all need to have the same reasons or motivations for wanting a phone like Mudita Pure. I’m not a meditator. I don’t care about SAR value. I don’t want to own a phone that I actively don’t use 99.99% of the time.

I understand that these are the aims and desires of some people… just not me.

I own an iPad and a Mac mini. I will keep using them. I use signal and WhatsApp. I teach on zoom and use video calls for friends and family. I’ll keep doing those things. I use google maps to find my way, especially when traveling. I’ll keep doing that.

I don’t use facebook or instagram or any other forms of social media, and I’ll keep not using them.

I’m not wanting a Mudita Pure because I’m an “addict” or feel afraid of technology, or scared of its impacts on my health.

I want Mudita Pure because I want the primary device that I carry around with me to be simpler, more beautiful, and functional without being cluttered. I want to use a phone to make phone calls and to write some amount of messages (I don’t have dozens of friends or family members that I connect with; just a few). I want to listen to high quality music by plugging my headphones in and playing FLAC files that I love.

In short, I want the phone to do a few things, easily and efficiently, on a beautiful e-ink screen.

I want to use the Mudita Pure. Not tons. Not obsessively. But I want to be able to use it, consistently, on a daily basis, as my only phone. I think this is a reasonable desire, and one that the Mudita community ought to understand and support.

I like speech to text as a feature because it’s easier and more efficient; it takes less time and effort. I think the value of that beats whatever benefit comes from disabling the data signal that I pay my mobile carrier for.

I like the idea of using the phone as a mobile hotspot because that will allow me to do more complicated internet tasks on a device that is better suited to it.

I like the Mudita desktop app and would love to be able to type longer SMS messages on the computer, without having to plug my Pure into the computer to do so. I think that’s a worthwhile goal, which would benefit many users.

I know the phone is called “Pure,” but I am not a Purist. I’m not a monk or a renunciate (as I’ve said, I don’t even meditate).

All the same, there’s still a lot that I would like about the Mudita phone, and I would appreciate if others could understand that, rather than trying to chase me away, in the name of purity…

3 Likes
22

Confirmed, we don’t have a WiFi module on board.
I’ve responded about the data in Pure here: Reviews of Mudita Pure, so I’ll just focus on the speech-to-text functionality.

At first, let me explain to you how such a functionality works (in most cases):

  • you speak to the phone, the voice is recorded
  • the audio data is being processed (offline or online)
  • the result is speech converted to text

The first point can be concerning - we have to record the words that you want to convert into text. It might be a privacy issue for some of the users, but alright, that’s not too bad. And then the second point comes in - data processing.
To be able to do this offline (without using any 3rd party services), the processing would require pretty huge computing power for analyzing the audio samples and using/training the neural network. Please consider also that every new language will require a new dataset, which is also occupied with increased power usage.
Of course, it could be done via 3rd party service such as Google Speech-to-text API, but we don’t use the mobile data inside our OS and we don’t want to send private data to Google.

We can’t ignore the fact, that those companies had trained the systems for years to have such accuracy.

Hope that sheds some light on this complicated functionality and explains why we don’t have this right now.

4 Likes
23

Thank you for this explanation, and my apologies for not responding sooner.

Looking again at the Mudita Pure product description on the webpage, I see that it mentions a voice recorder. Will I be able to send messages that include my recorded voice?

1 Like
24

I don’t think that’s possible, because the phone cannot send or receive MMS messages. Only text is supported.

25

As @john_dumpling has said, it is not possible since MMS are disabled. It’s two different kinds of processes from recording something only, to recording and sending something it to someone else. Different protocols and necessary tools for it to happen.

2 Likes
26

It’s possible that one could send a link to a mudita space storage version of the recording if you are using mudita center. Sending voice would be very nice and I think would work well with the device. The low SAR and no wifi bent of this device though probably conflict with a lot of the server processed things like voice to text. Though you end up with much more privacy with your data as it’s not being sent all over the place.

I want my phone to be a tool again and not a distraction device. A cut down android device might work better for the purpose of putting all the functions into one device. There are some companies providing devices more like this. Instead though I have decided on the Mudita Pure because of the openness of MuditaOS. I will be taking pictures with a Sony RX100. I removed my music from my Android phone to a Fiio M5 portable audio player. It’s interesting as neither of these devices advertise anything nor have any inbuilt distractions. I can use these tools without anything else on them distracting me from the task at hand.

I am actually hoping that the limitations of Mudita Pure around texting will make me call them instead when someone is trying to converse with me instead of just facilitate a meet up or send a simple message.

1 Like
27

As @Jose_Briones summed up, It won’t be possible to send the recorded voice via MMS, as the MMS feature is not available now.

1 Like
28

Not having any plan for MMS is a real problem.

  1. The ability for me to send voice messages would greatly reduce the uselessness of the non-T9 numberpad.

But more importantly, having some mechanism for MMS, such as the LightPhone does, of forwarding photos sent via
Text to me to my email - in this case to the Mudita Center - would be a huge deal.

This is why…

It’s one thing for mudita users to decide to go without cameras on our own phones, and to go without the ability to send photos to others. That’s our choice.

BUT, i really don’t want to have to write to all my friends and family and tell them never to send me photos. I want their experience of contacting me to be as seamless as possible. I’m happy to take the extra step of getting onto the computer and checking the Mudita Center to see the photo my mom sent me, but I want her to still send it.

Do you see my point?

2 Likes