Make the stock Galaxy S III a little better by replacing S-Voice with Google Now
When I first reviewed the Samsung Galaxy S III, I had a lot of good things to say about it. The device was, and still is, a great phone and a good example of what Android can do. However, I wasn’t such a fan of Samsung’s software solutions. Some of them were alright, like S-Memo, but I found S-Voice in particular to be much worse than Google Now.
In fact, I specifically said in the review that with Google Now out and performing so well, Samsung ought to just do away with S-Voice altogether and replace it with Google Now in an update. While Samsung hasn’t taken my advice, it turns out that a user on XDA shares my sentiment, and has posted an easy tutorial for replacing S-Voice with Google Now on the S III’s stock software.
Although the hack is for the stock S III TouchWiz ROM, it does require you to be rooted in order to install. The procedure is essentially the same as the steps for installing Google Now on stock ROMs, with a few extra steps to make things work seamlessly on the S III. Basically, users will need to download and install Google Now, activate it, and then use some trickery to replace all instances of S-Voice with Google’s offering.
The full instructions can be found through the source link below – I think this will greatly improve the user experience of the Galaxy S III, provided you’re the type that uses voice services. Anyway, it is also nice that others share my opinion on S-Voice: that it is now completely unnecessary.
[xda-developers]
