Replace S Voice With Google Now On Samsung Galaxy S III

Samsung Galaxy S III provides its own default voice assistant known as S Voice. However, if for some reason you are not satisfied with your S3 voice assistant then you can use the Google Now to take over your voice assistant’s functionality. In this post, I will explain the process of installing Google Now on a rooted Samsung Galaxy S III device. If you would like to find out how to root your S3 device, then see the link given below.

Google Now

Voice assistants have been showing up since at least 2010 for Android devices, however it is only now that we are seeing voice assistants that can match the high quality voice based functionality that Siri has to offer. The iOS app voice app known as Siri has seen many clones across numerous platforms and there is even a clone for Windows known as Mitini. Google’s Android tablet i.e. Google Nexus 7 also comes with speech recognition functionality which can even be activated for offline use by following instructions in this post: Enable Offline Speech Recognition On Google Nexus 7. The below instructions can help you fully replace S Voice on Samsung Galaxy S III (using ICS), with Google Now.

Samsung-Galaxy-S3-white-blue

Disclaimer:

Please follow this guide at your own risk. WML Cloud will not be responsible if your device gets damaged or bricked during the below mentioned process. It is advised to check out the link given at the end of this post for information regarding the current status of this guide.

Requirements:

google-io-google-now-screenshot

Instructions:

  1. Download the Google Now flashable zip file and save it to your device’s internal SD card.
  2. Reboot S3 to recovery and create a backup (to be on the safe side).
  3. Install the previously downloaded zip file from recovery.
  4. Reboot your S3 device and confirm that you now have ‘Google’ app in your app drawer.
  5. In case you haven’t done this already, simply launch the Latitude app (comes with Google Maps) and confirm the prompts which show up to sign in to Latitude.
  6. Now, launch the Google Now application and follow the installation steps till you can see your cards.
  7. Finally, launch S Voice and head over to settings and disable ‘Launch S Voice’.
  8. Now, install Home2 Shortcut by using the link from the “Requirements” section above, and launch it.
  9. Select double tap home (Home > Home) option and select ‘Voice Search’ from the list. Also make sure that you complete any additional instructions for Home2 Shortcut that might show up.
  10. Launch Google Now once more and tap Menu -> Refresh.
  11. Restart your phone to complete the process.

Congratulations. You have fully replaced S voice with the Google Now, for your Samsung Galaxy S3 phone (running ICS).

For more details, precautionary measures and any type of queries, head over to the link given below.

[via XDA-Developers Forum]