Having trouble with voice commands and Gmail syncing

[prettyCouple]

I've had my Galaxy Nexus for about a month now. Overall, I like it a lot, but I have had a few things emerge that are annoying:

• The voice dialer doesn't really work. There have been a few times when it's worked the way I want it to, but 95% of the time, it doesn't. And it's not a matter of it not recognizing what I'm saying, just for whatever reason, it doesn't execute my command. For instance, if I say "Call Home," it lists a few options for places to call, none of them actually "Home." But I know it's picking up what I'm saying because below that, it lists what I said along with some things I might have said. And I definitely have a contact in my contacts list called "Home."
  
  Along those same lines, it doesn't work for sending a text by voice prompt. If I press the mic button, then say "Send message to John: hey what's up." It will launch a text message, but rather than putting John in the "To" field, it cuts off the command after "Send message." So everything I say after "Send message" ends up in the body of the text. It ends up looking like this:
  
  To:
  Message: to John hey what's up.
  
  Am I just messing up the voice command? Again, it's not a matter of it not recognizing what I'm saying, it just isn't doing what I want it to.
• My Gmail doesn't sync, unless I'm connected via WiFi. I just tried syncing my account, and I had a full 4G signal, and it wouldn't sync. It didn't show any errors or anything, but it still showed 7/10/12 as the last date the email was synced. I had 3 unread emails that I could see on my computer, but they didn't come through on my phone until I connected via WiFi. Is there a setting that I might have tweaked somewhere that could have caused Gmail to only sync if I'm connected via WiFi? I've looked seemingly everywhere and can't find anything.
• I was also going to say something about the My Verizon widget not working, but I saw that addressed in a different thread. Any ideas if Verizon plans to fix that? It was a great feature.

Thanks!

[Ann154]

I'm not sure about most of that message.  However, do you have the background data turned off?  That might be related to the Gmail sync issue.

[prettyCouple]

How do you toggle background data on/off?

[vzw_customer_support]

Hi there prettyCouple!

I am glad to know that you like your Nexus! It appears that you are having some issues with your device that we can help with. I completely understand the need of the device to work as it should. Let's start with the Voice Action Commands. Try to disable contact sync to see if the issue persists:  Settings -> Accounts & Sync -> Your Account -> Uncheck Sync Contacts. Here is additional information that will help you with voice commands:  http://support.google.com/android/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1715292

G-mail Sync issue:

Go to Menu -> Settings -> Accounts & Sync -> G-mail -> Disable sync -> Power off device -> power back on -> go back to enable sync and test.

Let us know if the issue persists with either one of these issues.

Thank you,

Lena A.
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