iPhone Voice Control

The iPhone Voice Control is probably the most underutilized feature on the 3GS and 4 (sorry 3G iPhone users).  This is especially helpful in an age of increase stricter traffic laws governing cell phone use while driving.

To use Voice Control simply press the home button (the round button just below the screen) for a few seconds. When it is ready for you to speak, your iPhone will vibrate and chime twice quickly.

Here’s a video demo of the iPhone Voice Control.

Here are some available commands:

Dial 1 800 5 5 5 1 2 1 2
Dialing by numbers works remarkably well, even understanding “eight hundred” in addition to “eight zero zero.”

Dial (USERNAME) mobile
Accessing phone numbers from your address book is simple. Use the contact’s name followed by the specific phone number you want to call (work, home, mobile, pager, etc.).

Call (USERNAME)
Call is interchangeable with dial. In this example, just the contact’s name is spoken. If the contact has one phone number, that number will be dialed. Otherwise, the display will show the contact’s name at top plus the text “Multiple Numbers” just below. The iPhone will tell you which phone numbers are available (i.e., “Jennifer, mobile or work?”). Tell it which one you want to call and it will do the rest.

Play album (album name)
Play playlist (playlist name)
Play songs by (artist name)
Play artist (artist name)
These commands provide a variety of ways to select music to play.

Play more like this
This command creates and plays a genius playlist from the current song.

Play music
Play
Pause music
Pause
These commands start or stop playing, just like hitting the play/pause button on an iPod.

Next track
Next
Previous track
Previous
These commands do what you’d expect, behaving like the next and previous buttons on an iPod.

What song is playing?
What’s playing?
Who plays this song?
Who sings this song?
These commands all do the same thing. The song title and artist will be spoken by the iPhone.

Shuffle
This simple command will toggle the state of the shuffle setting. It will also tell you what the shuffle state is to confirm that it is what you want.