After using Wispr Flow on Android for free for the past few months, the new £15/month subscription (£12 if brought on an annual plan) prompted me to switch to Nothing’s built-in Essential Voice in earnest (I’d used it sporadically here and there, but now I’m fully on my 4a (Pro) I should really use it as my primary dictation tool). It’s so close to being a great daily driver, but it needs key quality-of-life improvements:
- Paragraphing: Wispr Flow creates paragraphs via natural pauses (crucial when using hands-free double-tap). This is especially important when you use this feature to ramble through ideas. Custom key mappings for line breaks in Essential Voice fail unless I use mapping, but even then it hasn’t worked unless I add extra punctuation on either side of the line break.
- Auto-Rotate Cancellation: Rotating the phone mid-capture cancels dictation. I shouldn’t have to disable system auto-rotate to prevent this. I’ve already fed this back through the Bug system and received a reply that the technical team is looking into it, but this was a while ago.
- Smart Capitalization: Unlike Wispr Flow, Essential Voice doesn’t detect mid-sentence context when resuming typing, causing unwanted capitalization mid-sentence that then needs correcting
- Punctuation & Custom Commands: Formatting commands (such as “open bracket” or quotes) are parsed inconsistently, even with mappings set to state “open bracket” means “(”. (Also, every time I enter the intelligent toolkit to add a new mapping, I have to dismiss the “try it out” window, please can this only come up the first time or if prompted)
- Backtracking & Self-Correction: Essential Voice transcribes filler words and backtracks verbatim (e.g., “if I were to correctly hang on, change that. If i were to say something…”) instead of clean editing like Wispr Flow (“If I were to say something”).
- Inconsistent Speed: Transcription processing times seem random. Short dictations sometimes take a while, while long rambles complete near instantly. It’s a minor thing, but it makes the experience feel inconsistent.
- Keyboard activation placement: I suspect this was placed in the bottom left corner due to being empty typically, and if it were in the bottom right corner, accidental activations would be through the roof. An option to move this to a pop-up widget when opening the Keyboard (As Wispr Flow does) or just changing the position in the bar below the keyboard would be nice for ease of reach.
Where Essential Voice Wins:
- Native Integration: Built into the OS without requiring accessibility permissions or floating accessibility shortcuts.
- Lists: Handles list formatting better than Wispr Flow.
Given that Essential Voice is included with Nothing OS, I’m going to keep utilising it, but I want to see the feature go from “good” to “great”. Currently, each time I use it, I find that 80% of the time, I’m making some form of corrections, but if that could be brought down even slightly, it’d be fantastic
