Cannot do a hands-free Bluetooth call

[Brion]

I've had my S4 for 3 months. It is my 6th smartphone. All my prior smartphones and even the dumb phones before them could make a call using only my voice when using a Bluetooth device. It seems to recognize the name I'm looking for, but it has trouble locating the entries in my contacts. For example, when I attempt to call my home I have said with prior phones "call firstname lastname home 1" and it would make the call, sometimes asking to confirm it was picking the right person. When I do this with the S4 and use my own name, it tells me "I found 9 entries for firstname lastname, ... or choose from the following 3 entries: wife lastmane, son1 lastname, son2 lastname" and it seems to want me to select using the screen instead letting me make the call hands-free like it is intended to be (and legal to do). Since it has clearly recognized the correct first and last names I spoke, I cannot understand why it then thinks my other family members match my name. This is totally bogus.

After my first month of this, I took it and my Motorola car bluetooth device into the VZW store and showed them how it doesn't work. They convinced me that I needed a newer Bluetooth device, so I spent $100 on a new Motorola device that supports the latest level of Bluetooth, but it doesn't work any better than my old device. What good is having the latest wiz-bang phone if even the simple stuff doesn't work. I've never had a problem making calls with voice on any phone in the past (dumb LG phones, two Blackberries, Droid X, an S3, an iPhone), and it makes no sense that it would require me to use the screen to complete calls I try to start using Bluetooth. It can't be a voice recognition problem because it repeats back to me the correct name, but then proceeds to look up incorrect names in my address book. I am not happy that I may have to go back to my Droid X just to get voice calling to work again.

Does anyone know how to make a call using only voice on the S4? The VZW store is not much help.

[pherson]

So..... let me get this right.... your bluetooth is powered on...and u can just say acommand and not touch the bluetooth or your phone?

[Brion]

OK. The term used is "Hands Free", but you do have to push a button on the Bluetooth device to have it initiate the sequence where it beeps indicating you should tell it a command, such as "call John Doe mobile" and it is supposed to do some form of voice to text for the command and names and then look the name up in your address book. This is the way making a call with a Bluetooth device is done, or at least that is how it has been done with all my previous phones.

If I say "Call John Doe mobile", the phone typically responds "There are n entries in your phone book with the name John Doe; be more specific or choose from the following three entries: Jane Doe, John C Swazie, Rick Dough". If you look on the phone screen you can see it has correctly translated the voice into the name you intended, and then ran into trouble with entries in the contacts list that have any similarity to the first or last name. This makes it look like a problem with the lookup in the contacts more than anything else.

I tried to tell the VZW store people that it couldn't be the Bluetooth since it types back my first and last name correctly when I say "Call myfirst mylast home" and then it proceeds to list 3 of my family members who have completely different first names that are not remotely similar in pronunciation. Of course I normally have my phone clipped to my belt, so selecting from the list is not possible and in fact could get me a ticket if see by a passing police officer. With my prior phones, if there was a misunderstanding of a name, it would ask "do you want to call so_and_so?" and you could say "no", but this phone gives me a listed that it both speaks and prints to the screen, and it wants me to select from those or repeat my request, but it just keeps giving me the same result no matter how many times I try it (perhaps I'm insane).

How is it that a fancy new phone can't do what all my prior phones could do especially one being marketed as having wonderful new voice command recognition? What a joke.