During the last years, dictation software has become more and more popular with the development of touchscreen devices. Many writers prefer to use mechanical keyboards for typing, because touchscreen keyboards are not suited for longer texts: they can get very uncomfortable for someone who is not used to them. So especially when you’re outside, dictating text or data can be a very comfortable and healthy alternative to touchscreen keyboards. Even Apple has shown a reaction to that development by introducing Siri, the mobile all-in-one voice assistant on the iPhone 4S. Although it works fine and has lots of features, there are still many independent competitors in this area of app development.. Assistant, developed by Appmosphere and designed by talented designer Michael Flarup, is one of the newer, yet slightly more interesting, efforts.

Assistant serves just one feature: setting calendar events and timers via voice recognition. I know, Siri does that as well, plus much more (and might be funnier too). So why mention a more or less obviously inferior competitor, for which you even have to invest extra money when you get Siri for free with your iPhone 4S? Well, first of all, because not everyone owns an iPhone 4S and Assistant works on 3G(s) and 4 models. And to a certain extent, because of Flarup and his UI work.
After firing up the app you’re greeted with that immensely huge and gloomy stainless steel recording button and some examples on how to use the features of Assistant. Tap it and the voice recording via the integrated or attached microphone starts; tap it again to stop it. The app processes your vocal input (using the well-founded technology of Nuance Communications) and shows up a date dialogue afterwards, titled with the dictated appointment content and enhanced by eventually mentioned reminders. That’s it: all these main windows are clean, simple and immediately understandable, and the voice processing is pretty accurate and efficient.

Besides its well-done demo video on the app’s website, Assistant also has many setting possibilities which make the app very flexible and useful. You can select the default calendar in which Assistant will deposit your appointments, and default alter time and event duration. The app currently supports only English language input: you can choose from Britain, American, and Australian English. In addition to that, the settings include examples as to which kind of formulations the voice recognition is able to process. It’s quite variable: for example to set an appointment to a special time you can use direct time spelling (12.00 AM) or prevalent paraphrases like noon.

So now let’s get into the UI. Although I like Michael Flarup’s style of digital design very much and, as I already pointed out, the main window and the dialogue panel look nice and polished, there are two things that made me feel a bit uncomfortable with the overall design of Assistant: the buttons and the (also stainless-steel-like) titlebar used within the settings. The latter might fit pretty well to the main window and the “What can I say?”-example list, since the recording button, the monospace screen at the bottom, and the gloomy red list elements correspond to it. But if you move into the settings and the standard iPhone listing UI used for selecting several options, it becomes a disturbing visual overkill. Secondly the buttons set on it do not have anything in common with the plastic and rather machinery look of the titlebar: in my opinion, they are too smooth and colored too dark to fit to the bright but still cold and “hard” atmosphere the title bar creates.

So, I have to say that giving an exact final statement or even a recommendation for buying Assistant is rather difficult. It definitely has some advantages and provides iPhone 3G(S) and 4 users the possibility of stripped-down voice dictation to quickly create calendar appointments. But its look is a bit uneven and therefore I think not good enough to be considered as a must-have — there are some hot spots in it, but to me it is not completely coherent and attractive to reasonably use because of the design. Still if you’re searching for a stable and quite enjoyable app to solve the problem of not having a Siri-like working robot on your phone, get Assistant for $1.99 to dictate calendar events on your older devices.