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>> The road with hands free calling is that you usually have to use your hands to initiate or receive a call. Which means you have to take your hands off the wheel and your eyes off the road at the beginning and end of each call. Blue Ant aims to fix this smallest of issues with the Blue Ant S4, a device that it calls the first true hands free voice controlled speaker phone. I'm Antuan Goodwin, let's take a first look at this system and examine Blue Ants claim. The Blue Ant S4 features a slim profile with a large speaker. A small pinhole microphone faces forward, and there's a touch sensitive edge for volume control. Swipe left or right to increase or reduce the volume, or tap the center to manually initiate or cancel voice command mode.
>> Cancel.
>> There's also a power switch and a micro USB port for charging. On the back the unit there's a pair of strong magnets for connecting the Blue Ant's visor mounts. You get two of them in the box of varying thicknesses. The Blue Ant S4 achieves its true hands free moniker, because it's always listening for a particular trigger phrase to initiate the voice command system. Simply say Blue Ant Speak To Me, and the S4 springs to life ready to receive the next voice command. Blue Ant speak to me.
>> Say a command.
>> What can I say?
>> You could say: am I connected, pair me, phone command, favorites, redial, call back, LED light, sensitivity level, check battery, update phonebook, or cancel. Say a command.
>> From here you can get battery charge status, pairing state, and initiate calls all without physically touching the unit. Incoming calls can also be answered or rejected with voice commands, and there's even a selection of apps for android phones and Blackberry that can read incoming text message aloud.
>> [inaudible] from Antuan Goodwin. Visit CNET.com for the full review.
>> An iPhone app is coming soon. Unfortunately you can't get respond to those texts via voice. The one issue that we found during our testing of S4 is that, while the device places a heavy emphasis on using voice commands, it lacks its own internal voice dialer. Instead deferring to the paired phones voice command system when its time to initiate a call. If you're paired to a phone that lacks its own voice dialing system, such as most of the android phones on the market, then you'll have to manually initiate calls or not at all. Admittedly, this is an issue with the phone and not with the S4. But if the S4 had its own dialer, it's functionality wouldn't be a the mercy of the handset. To find our more about the rest of the S4's functions and features, pros and cons, including its tight integration with Microsoft's Bing 411 system, check out our full review on CNET.com. Until then, I'm Antuan Goodwin, and this has been your first look at the Blue Ant S4 true hands free voice controlled car speakerphone.
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