uk version work in use for voice recoginition?

[mpejsa]

i'm travelling to europe in a week
just wondering if i'd be better off buying a 720 over seas then bringing it back here.

if i do this -- will the voice recoginition work on US maps?

 

[Pedro2NR]

No its not available for the US.
I believe the 720 will only come with either Europe or North America maps, not both.
Currently, the 910 is the only unit that has both maps.

 

[digital-flex]

I don't see why it wouldn't but it would be best to contact TT and see what they say.

 

[spaners]

plus the price in the uk ?329.99 $630 makes it expensive for u

i'm travelling to europe in a week
just wondering if i'd be better off buying a 720 over seas then bringing it back here.

if i do this -- will the voice recoginition work on US maps?

 

[digital-flex]

Yeah, as far as I can tell, the voice recognition is the only thing missing and you would be paying a big premium for that feature.

 

[ptco911]

Does anyone know if this will be made available for the US versions?

 

[Pedro2NR]

No word, but it doesn't look like it will.

 

[vroomfondel]

No word, but it doesn't look like it will.

Perhaps they are worried about litigation in the US again.

 

[ptco911]

What type of litigation?

 

[digital-flex]

This is just a guess but isn't there a law that forbids cell phone use in an automobile.

 

[a4000]

This is just a guess but isn't there a law that forbids cell phone use in an automobile.

No.

There may be laws in particular states which require hands free, but none I'm aware of that forbid cell phone use altogether.

 

[Meteor242]

I asked TomTom about the voice recognition for the US and they said that the feature was not planned for the US market as there was a law that forbade it.

I asked if I could purchase one from the UK and if it would work in the US and she said that the US maps would have to be purchased for the UK unit and that if there were to be any warranty or service issues, it would have to go back to the UK for repair.

Based on those responses, it didn't seem to be worth the hassle to me.

 

[The Spook]

I asked TomTom about the voice recognition for the US and they said that the feature was not planned for the US market as there was a law that forbade it.

Sorry, but I think that is complete rubbish. A law forbidding voice recognition? ha-ha!

I can tell you that a UK device with a US map will not have voice recognition. The voice recognition is tied to the map data, not the device. US maps don't have the voice data, European ones do. Simple as that.

So, if you take a UK device to the US it will be able to do voice recognition only for UK/European addresses.

 

[Meteor242]

When I spoke with TomTom on this issue, they also said the English accent programed into the voice recognition unit would probably play havoc with an American user.

They also said another reason the voice recognition would probably never make it into the American market was the number of regional accents in the US would be too difficult to program. (New York, Southern, Texas ...)

 

[bilybob]

Number of regional accents give me a break. They have a version for sweden and the UK with voice recognition(I didn't scroll down every country on the tomtom site), so atleast it can do two accents which means the hillbillies and the northerners are covered

This has to do with licensing costs more than anything else. Plus voice recognition looks better in commercials because you have to push 5 buttons to get to the voice prompt which kind of defeats the purpose.

The Spook is right on the voice recognition also and the voice recognition is tied to the map. There is no difference in the actual units other than different firmwares.

 

[The Spook]

Plus voice recognition looks better in commercials because you have to push 5 buttons to get to the voice prompt which kind of defeats the purpose.

You can move the voice prompt button to the 'quick menu', so you can get to speech input with 2 taps.

There is no difference in the actual units other than different firmwares.

They don't even have different firmware. The only difference is in the map. US firmwares are exactly the same as their European counterparts and are interchangeable (they are the same!).

 

[bilybob]

So I guess they were holding on till the 920 to activate voice recognition. A hundered extra bucks for voice recognition and twice the memory and ofcourse a huge map selection.