Apple may bring offline voice dictation for iOS 7

Apple is reportedly in the midst of testing an offline version of voice dictation for iOS. The feature, similar to Android’s offline dictation functionality, will reduce voice dictation’s reliability on Internet connectivity to convert voice-to-text.

The code discovered by Hamza Sood and reported by 9to5 Mac is said to be located inside both iOS 7 betas but not in iOS 6. When a user tries to use his voice to punch in text currently, the device will upload the speech on to the cloud using software. The speech will then be converted to text and sent back to the device. The reliability on Internet connectivity is a lot on this method. It also requires a cloud backend, which means errors and loading time could potentially render this feature a lot less effective than it should be.

Offline voice dictation coming up (Image credit: 9to5 Mac)

This new code shows that Apple could be testing the ability to let the device convert speech-to-text without having to rely on the cloud or Internet connectivity. This means faster dictation of notes, emails and even web search on your iOS devices. The report adds that the cloud-based dictation will still be available for certain situations. Of course, this will mean having to download large packages for being able to use this feature on the iOS. It will also be a part of the upcoming OS X Mavericks as a large hundred-plus MB of download.

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The offline dictation feature is bound to help Siri too. The speech-to-text function getting a boost will mean Apple’s voice assistant being able to answer certain queries faster.