Android dictation takes a major leap forward with the Jelly Bean version of the mobile operating system. It’s realtime and almost flawless.

Dictation has been a consistent and useful feature in the Android operating system for a while. It’s quite effective, often accurate, and usually ignored. I hate forgetting about dictation!

A while back, a reader emailed me wanting to know why the dictation feature only could digest small chunks of text at a time. That’s just the way it worked: You’d utter about 5 or 10 seconds of dialog and then the text was translated. It worked, but it wasn’t natural.

With Android Jelly Bean, dictation is smooth and nearly instantaneous. The words pop up on the screen almost a breath after you utter them. It reminds me of the old Battlestar Galactica TV show where Commander Adama would dictate his log onto a video display unit. That science fiction is now a reality.

To use Jelly Bean Dictation, touch the microphone icon on the keyboard, or anywhere you see that icon. That’s the way dictation has worked since it was introduced to Android a few years back. The dictation screen looks like Figure 1, which is similar to the way it’s always looked.

Figure 1. Jelly Bean Dictation

After you see the dictation screen, start speaking. As long as the device has an Interent connection, the text you utter appears, word by word, on the screen. To pause dictation, touch the button as shown in Figure 1.

If a word is wrong, then touch that word. You’ll see a pop-up list of alternatives, one of which is most likely the word you intended.

The only problem I’ve had with Jelly Bean dictation is that I often pause too long, mostly because I’m amazed at what I see. If so, just touch the screen again to fire up dictation. It’s simple and easy. I wish everything worked that way!