Google Android has built-in speech recognition, which means you can translate speech to text in many apps. But Edwin is one of the few that will talk back. For instance, you can ask Edwin the time, and it will tell you. Ask it for tomorrow’s forecast and a computerized voice will read it to you. You can even ask it to translate words or sentences from one language to another or to define or spell words for you.

Edwin also works as an app launcher and controller for your phone’s hardware. For instance, you can tell it to put your phone in airplane mode or turn the Bluetooth on or off. Or you can tell it to open the camera application.

Like most speech recognition apps, Edwin isn’t perfect. Or maybe it’s just my voice that isn’t perfect. Sometimes it misunderstands commands, and while you’re supposed to be able to open applications by saying “launch X” or “open X,” I’ve found that it works a lot better with “open.” But overall, it’s a pretty nifty little application, and best of all it’s available as a free download.

After the break is a video showing how Edwin responds when I ask it for the time, temperature, nearest movie theater, and other information.

via Gizmodo