Speech detection software has been in the business for long but no app has been impressive until now. With the iPhone OS3.0 including voice commands, Apple laid the platform for the debut of this genre of apps on its smartphone. Dragon Dictation is one of the latest apps in this genre, which lets users dictate notes on the iPhone.

The app has a simple UI with a centrally-placed record button, and a gentle tap on the button initiates the recording. Once the recording is complete, the audio file is processed and the text is diplayed in a text window, from where users can edit the displayed text. Further, the text can be transferred to the clipboard, SMS app, and the e-mail app.

It has to be noted that the app works on a cloud-based infrastructure, meaning that the voice message is transferred to a Dragon Dictation server, where its processed and the text message is sent to the user's iPhone. While this structure of the app can save on memory and processing load on users' iPhone units, the app cannot function without a data connection (3G/EDGE/Wi-Fi).

While the voice recogntion algorithm is not as robust as that of iPhone OS' voice commands, performance is on par with voice commands on iPhone apps, including Google Search and the latest search app from Microsoft, Bing Search.

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