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Vlingo Workaround for People who Cannot Afford the Mail and Text Features

Submitted by Florian on 22 August 2010
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People in the U.S. can use Dragon Dictation to transcribe their text messages and e-mails. For a lot of countries in Europe or Africa, this isn't the case. We have Vlingo, which is pretty good. There's one little problem, though, the texting and e-mailing functionality in this app are not free. This guide is my attempt at leveling the playing field.

Alright, then, let's begin.

  1. Open Vlingo and find the button to start dictating.
  2. Double tap and hold this button.
  3. Say 'text' or 'mail' followed by the text you want in the body of your message. For purposes of clarity, remain silent for about half a second between the mail command and the actual message.
  4. The Vlingo app will give you a beep and a screen will pop up once it has finished processing your text. The screen shows you a few fields with a notification that you need to pay for mail and text functionality along with an offer stating you can also purchase them both as a bundle for a reduced price.
  5. Flick around the screen, you should find a text field containing your transcribed text. Now comes the workaround.
  6. The app does not block you from selecting and copying this text. Turn the rotor to Edit and choose the 'select all' option. A menu pops up asking you what you want to do with the selection; choose Copy.
  7. This part is a bit sketchy. I have noticed in some instances that i cannot send a message after doing this while Vlingo is open, so what we will do is terminate the app. Do a double-click on the home button and than double tap-and-hold an app to enter edit mode. Find Vlingo in the list. You might have to scroll pages by using a three-finger flick left or right. Double tap Vlingo to close the app.
  8. Press the home button once and locate your mail or messages app. You should be able to paste the text from Vlingo into your message and send it now.

Sure, it isn't as smooth as Dragon's integration, but, until Nuance creates support for more european countries, this should give people like me who can't or aren't allowed to purchase apps at least a bit of speech functionality. This process seems pretty complicated at first, but it's very easy once you get used to it. If you are feeling adventurous, you can leave out the closing Vlingo step, i've found this works for me 8 out of 10 times.