I know this is a bit late to be writing about the T-Mobile Dash. In a few days, I’ll have had my phone for one year. This means that it is old technology. I only recently discovered the Voice Command feature on the phone and have been all over it ever since. It caught my interest one day when I was wearing my bluetooth headset and a voice started telling me that I had a message from somebody and read the subject to me. It freaked me out. I didn’t know it could do that. So, I poked around and learned that I could set it to read all my messages rather than just the urgent ones. While I’m driving, I occasionally take a peek at my Twitter messages. Having the phone read text messages to me as they come in saves me from that task, which theoretically makes things safer for me.
Looking around the web, I discovered that I could also issue commands to my phone to get it to do things like tell me the time, tell it to go to flight mode, find out my next appointment, and other tasks. So, the problem was that it required me to pick up my phone and press the Home button to activate the voice command. Once you do that, it’s pointless to issue a voice command as I can do the rest myself. I found a blog entry that corrects a bug on the Dash through a hack on the phone’s registry. Now, all I have to do is tap my bluetooth headset, issue a command, and listen to the response. I just made the registry edit today, so I have not had a chance to test it out.
The only thing I wish I could do is listen to my music via the bluetooth headset. If this worked, I’d buy the AAA battery powered headset to enjoy the 8 hour talk time.
UPDATE
I went and purchased the Motorola S9 headset, which lets you listen to music on your Dash using bluetooth. Apparently, there are two settings for the headset. When you have it as phone headset, you only hear through one ear. Notifications are one-eared as well. For the music connection, you get full stereo from both ears.
If you pair your headset with another device for either setting, then you have to re-pair it to your phone. Simply go to the Communication Manager, select Settings, select option 2 Bluetooth, option 1 Bluetooth, highlight your S9, then select “Set as Hands-free” or “Set as Wireless Stereo” depending on which got turned off.
Shaine 