Waiting on my Moto X, have questions

[JoeHockey]

So I finally bit the bullet and ordered my upgrade, my Moto X will be here Friday. One question I haven't seen an answer to is how the always on voice commands work/interact with a bluetooth headset. Does the phone listen over bluetooth for commands or are you still limited to shouting across the room to tell the X to do something?

 

[JoeHockey]

So I finally bit the bullet and ordered my upgrade, my Moto X will be here Friday. One question I haven't seen an answer to is how the always on voice commands work/interact with a bluetooth headset. Does the phone listen over bluetooth for commands or are you still limited to shouting across the room to tell the X to do something?

May have found my answer. This article seems to indicate that you can enable "listening" over a bluetooth headset.
Moto X: The first two weeks

 

[BigMcGuire]

Correct you can have it listen over bluetooth headset(s) in the settings. My car does this too.

 

[JoeHockey]

Looking forward to this, hopefully it will finally fix the problem of having to push the button on my headset, then tell it "phone commands" before it does anything!

 

[b-jammin21]

Did not find any of this in touchless control settings. Where is this located in settings?

 

[JoeHockey]

I now have my phone and I didn't see it either. I have gone through all the settings I can find and turned on everything related to "listen to bluetooth" and so far it does not seem that the touchless controls listen over bluetooth. My "scientific" way of testing this was to walk into the next room with my headset and say "OK Google now"...nothing happened.

 

[Dalvik_Cache]

I have the Moto X, its in Settings > Language and Input > Voice Search > Bluetooth Headset. The description is "Records audio through Bluetooth headset if available". Heres the scoop, my S4 had this setting, and I could never get it to work. It may be different on the Moto X, but I wouldn't be optimistic. To do that would require your bluetooth device to never "sleep" which would effectively tank your batter on the device and the phone. So, my person guess is that it does not. When you have this enabled, and you select Google Now, the phone will wake up the devices bluetooth for the duration of the query, and then turn it off when done.

Hope this helps!

 

[BigMcGuire]

I apologize guys/gals. I just assumed it was using my bluetooth headset. Now that I think of it that would be incredibly inefficient for it to be streaming bluetooth all the time just to listen to phrases. I had the phone in my pocket at work with a bluetooth headset and the "ok google now" worked - as well as when I was driving (it was in a coat pocket) - Listen for texts and what not. So I just assumed it was using the bluetooth. Figured the Google "Record Audio through Bluetooth (Google --> Settings --> Voice --> Bluetooth Headset (Records audio through Bluetooth headset if available) was doing just that.

Sorry all.

 

[JoeHockey]

I know the Vlingo app used to have this feature and it warned that it would use the phone battery (because it would be always listening) but it never made any mention of the BT device battery. I always assumed (perhaps incorrectly) that the headset was always listening.

 

[JoeHockey]

So after playing with the Moto X and my headset I have learned something more about this topic. On my older phones if I pressed the button on the headset, the headset would prompt "say a command" to which I would respond "phone commands". This would cause my old phones to respond in one way or another, usually just asking me what action I wanted to perform. With the Moto X I have found that when I press the headset button the headset still replies with "say a command" and I still have to reply "phone commands". Once I did this it seemed like nothing was happening until I just blurted out "OK Google Now". At that point the phone is listening to me and waiting for a google now command. This appears to be the only way the phone listens using the headset. Not a bad feature, I just wish I could hit the button and go but this works.

 

[MotoXGirl]

I think you can say "OK, Google Now" and then "Help" it will give you a list of commands. I was blown away at what all it could do.

 

[JoeHockey]

So after playing with the Moto X and my headset I have learned something more about this topic. On my older phones if I pressed the button on the headset, the headset would prompt "say a command" to which I would respond "phone commands". This would cause my old phones to respond in one way or another, usually just asking me what action I wanted to perform. With the Moto X I have found that when I press the headset button the headset still replies with "say a command" and I still have to reply "phone commands". Once I did this it seemed like nothing was happening until I just blurted out "OK Google Now". At that point the phone is listening to me and waiting for a google now command. This appears to be the only way the phone listens using the headset. Not a bad feature, I just wish I could hit the button and go but this works.

Just a quick update to my post, the one problem I have encountered with using "OK Google Now" with the bluetooth headset is that the phone seems to get confused as to where to route the audio when it does something like read back your text message prior to sending. After using voice commands through the BT headset to tell Google Now to compose and send a text message it then (very loudly) reads the text message back over the phone speaker! Minor annoyance but if you were hoping to do something quietly via your headset you can forget it! LOL