Impress your Siri-Loving Friends: Garmin's Smartphone Link & SpeakToIt Assistant - Your iPhone Can't Do This!

Siri is cool. No question.  But it can't do it all.  Once in awhile I love to show my "no one does it better than Apple" friends something that someone does better than Apple.  That day has arrived with Garmin's Smartphone Link app for Android, a compatible Garmin Nuvi and Assistant by Speaktoit.  This is the closest you can get today, to natural language processing on a PND.

I've previously covered the awesome (and largely undocumented) features of the Smartphone Link app. Smartphone Link combined with Assistant by Speaktoit provides you with one of the most user friendly and fast navigation interfaces that I've ever seen.

Using Assistant by Speaktoit is beyond the scope of this post.  But it is voice recognition - how hard can it be, right?  The Assistant app can be started on Android in a number of ways.  A simple application shortcut can be installed on your main screen. There is a widget available for quicker access directly to the voice recognition engine.  Or the app can even be assigned to the long-press of the search key on your phone.  Take your pick.

Now for the Garmin integration.  Check it out:

1. Start Assistant using the method of your choice discussed above.
2. Speak your search such as "Show me the nearest coffee shops."
3. Within Speaktoit, you will see a Google Map "widget" of the nearest coffee shops.
4. Press the large quadruple arrow button (looks like a cartoonish "X' button) in the upper right hand corner to open the Google Maps app.  Speaktoit passes your spoken search query to Google Maps automatically. 
5. Now that Google Maps is open, follow the instruction in my previous blog post to pass this to your Nuvi.

This may seem like a convoluted process.  In reality it takes about 10 seconds from the time you speak your search to the time your Nuvi has the address.  Do it twice and it will become second nature. Handsfree. Voice Recognition. Natural Language Search. Fast.