Support
To make sure you are running the latest version of Vlingo for iPhone, you should visit the page for that product. If you wish to see the FAQ for another vlingo product, please visit our Support page.
To find which version you're running, inside the Vlingo app select the "i" (info) button on the top right of the screen, then select About. The first two digits are the version number.
- How can I contact Vlingo for support?
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Please first look through the list of frequently asked questions on this page. If none of the answers on the FAQ page answered your question, please send us a note. The best way to do that is by filling out our Contact Support page. If you are having a problem, please send us as much detail as you can including:
- Where you were in the application.
- What you were trying to do.
- What behavior you observed from the application.
- The exact text of any error message or other response you received.
The more specific you are, the better we can help you.
- Which models of Apple iPhone does Vlingo support, and can I run Vlingo on the iPod Touch?
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At this time, Vlingo runs on the Apple iPhone, iPhone 3G, and iPhone 3GS. It does not run on the iPod Touch. As we support new devices, we'll announce the support on our Web site and on the Apple App Store.
- It takes too many steps to bring up Vlingo. Is there a way to make Vlingo easier to find and start?
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To keep Vlingo in easy reach, you can add the Vlingo application icon to your iPhone Dock (the bar of four icons at the bottom of your Home screen).
To add Vlingo to your Dock:
- If your Dock already has the maximum of four application icons, choose one to remove so you can add the Vlingo icon. If your Dock has less than four icons, go to step 4.
- Touch and hold the application icon you want to remove until it starts to wiggle.
- Drag the icon out of the Dock and onto the main Home screen.
- Find the Vlingo application icon (you may have to flick through pages of your Home screen to find it).
- Drag the Vlingo application icon onto your Dock.
- Press the Home button to save your changes.
Now Vlingo is easy to find and start from your iPhone Dock.
- What is Vlingo's privacy policy, and what do you do with the contacts from my address book?
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Thanks for asking. We think you will be comfortable with our privacy policy.
Vlingo gives you the option of uploading or not uploading the names of your contacts. Vlingo uploads contact names only so it can recognize your contacts when you say them for voice dialing. You can choose not to upload your contact names, however, the voice dialer will not work if you opt out of this collecting of contacts.
Before collecting your contact names, Vlingo prominently displays a screen with the following notice:
"In order to voice dial, Vlingo needs to collect your contact names. Vlingo collects only the names (not phone numbers) of your contacts and uses this information only to ensure accuracy."
This same screen gives you the option to view our complete privacy policy, as does the Info -> About screen. The full Vlingo privacy policy is also available on our Web site at Privacy Policy. Once you've reviewed the complete policy, please feel free to contact us if you have further questions.
Here are some portions of our privacy policy that are most relevant to this issue of collecting contact names.
"Vlingo will NEVER collect personally identifiable information from you, or disclose that information outside of Vlingo, without your express permission."
"We collect names of individuals and companies that appear in your address book in order to provide a high quality service when you speak a contact name. We do not collect any other information associated with these names such as addresses or phone numbers. We will never use these names to contact anyone for any reason, and we have no way of associating these names with unique individuals or of linking them back to you."
"Vlingo respects your privacy, and we take protecting it very seriously. We don't like it when people use our own personal information or offer it to others without our permission, and we won't do that to you. In fact, since our own employees are also Vlingo users, our own privacy is at stake just as much as yours is."
- What languages and regional dialects does Vlingo understand?
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Here are the languages and dialects implemented on each of our platforms:
Vlingo for BlackBerry is currently implemented for English only. It is particularly optimized for speaking styles native to the United States and the United Kingdom.
Vlingo for Nokia: English UK and English US; German (DE), Spanish (ES), and Italian (IT).
Vlingo for iPhone: English, optimized for speaking styles native to North America.
Vlingo for Windows Mobile: English, optimized for speaking styles native to North America.
As with all Vlingo technology, language recognition improves naturally and automatically over time. The more you and others use Vlingo, the better the recognition gets.
Several additional languages and regional dialects are in development and will be added over time. As we support additional languages and accents, we will announce it on our Web site.
- Is Vlingo free? Will I be charged to use it?
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Vlingo is free! To improve speech recognition accuracy for our entire community of users, we offer Vlingo for free. Charging a fee would introduce a barrier to improvement and slow the process. We cannot say that Vlingo will always be free. Right now, however, we do not have any plans to charge you for using Vlingo.
Though we offer Vlingo for free, there are some standard costs associated with using it. Vlingo is an Internet-based application. So, just as you pay a carrier to connect your PC to the Internet, running Vlingo on your phone requires a data plan from your wireless carrier. Your carrier, not Vlingo, sets the cost of the data plan.
- To use Vlingo, do I need an Internet connection or a data plan?
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Yes. Vlingo is an Internet-based application. To run on your phone, Vlingo requires a data plan from your wireless carrier, just as you need an Internet connection to connect your computer to the Internet. If the browser on your device can access the Internet, you should be able to use Vlingo.
- How does Vlingo learn over time?
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Vlingo gets better the more you use it. It begins to adapt to your voice as quickly as the first few times you speak to it. The learning continues as long as you use the product.
It also learns the words, phrases, and sentences you commonly speak. If Vlingo makes a mistake and you correct it, Vlingo will learn to avoid making the same mistake again later.
Vlingo also learns from what other users say and uses that knowledge to improve its accuracy for you.
- Why doesn't Vlingo understand the contact names from my address book?
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You do not have to do anything to get the Vlingo iPhone voice dialer to scan the contacts from your address book. Each time that Vlingo starts up, it checks for any recent changes to your address book (assuming you have permitted Vlingo to upload your contact names so the voice dialer works). Updating the Vlingo recognizer should not take more than a few minutes and only happens once each time you make a change.
If Vlingo does not match on your intended contact, it is because the text in the text box does not match the spelling of your intended contact. If Vlingo misrecognizes a name or any other word, you should type in the correction. Vlingo will begin to learn.
This section of the FAQ, the "Speech Recognition" section, contains other hints and suggestions for how to get the best possible responses from Vlingo. If you still have trouble with a specific word or name after reviewing these tips, please tell us which words/names are particularly problematic, and we will look into whether we can improve recognition of these words/names in the product.
- How can I get better speech recognition accuracy?
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Vlingo uses highly advanced speech recognition technology to deliver the best accuracy possible. As with humans, it sometimes misunderstands what you say. The answers to the following questions provide information about how you can improve the accuracy of the Vlingo speech recognition.
- Be sure to pronounce words clearly but naturally.
- Do not pause between each word.
- Begin speaking shortly after initiating recording.
- Avoid long periods of silence since this can cause Vlingo to pick up background noise as intended speech.
- What if I am somewhere noisy?
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Think of Vlingo as a person you are speaking to on the phone. If there is a lot of random background noise like street noise, car noise, or background conversation in a loud restaurant, hold the phone closer to your mouth and speak louder.
If the background noise is distinct conversation such as a nearby radio or someone talking near you, Vlingo may not be able to distinguish your words from theirs. Turn down the radio or move a bit further away from the other conversation.
If you are in a very quiet environment, you can speak more softly.
- How should I hold the phone?
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Hold it either as you would when you are on a call, or with the phone a few inches in front of your mouth. If you are in a noisy environment, hold the phone closer to your mouth and speak a bit louder.
- How loudly should I speak?
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Start out by speaking as you would to another person. Experiment with speaking somewhat louder or softer.
- How do I let Vlingo know it heard me correctly?
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Vlingo displays what it thinks you said. If the text is correct, you complete your action using this text. If the text is not correct, you can edit to correct it and then complete your action. In both instances, Vlingo learns the words, phrases, sentences, and corrections and uses this information to improve subsequent accuracy and performance. Vlingo is always getting better.
- Vlingo returned a word or a phrase that I find offensive, and that I certainly did not say!
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We have put a lot of effort into not incorrectly returning offensive language. If we did not do a good enough job of that in your case, we definitely want to know about it so we can see what we can do to prevent it from happening again.
First, make sure that you have Content Filtering turned on. If this setting is on and Vlingo thinks that you said a phrase that is in the content filter list, it will display the first letter of each word followed by asterisks (*). This option does not affect text that you type.
To turn content filtering on (it is turned on by default):
- From the Vlingo Home screen, go to Tools (the wrench icon in the upper left corner of the Home screen).
- The first line on the Tools screen is Content Filtering, and you can slide it to On or Off.
If you had content filtering turned on and it returned offensive language anyway, please send us information about what you said, and what was returned. We will investigate to determine what we can do to prevent it in the future. Send it to us by filling out our Contact Support form.
- Can I use Vlingo to send an SMS or Email?
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No, not yet. We hope to add these features in a future release.
- Whenever I say something, Vlingo sends it to Web search. Why? How can I make it do what I want?
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Search is the default if Vlingo does not recognize a command in what you said. On the Home tab, for best results, say specifically what you want to do.
On the other tabs, you do not need to specify what you want to do.
For example:
On the Home tab, say: "Find pizza boston"
On the Maps tab, say: "pizza boston"
On the Home tab, say: "Search concert tickets"
On the Search tab, say: "concert tickets"
On the Home tab, say: "Call jessica smith"
On the Phone tab, say: "jessica smith"
On the Home tab, say: "Facebook is going to the gym."
On the Social tab, say: "is going to the gym."
For more information, see the "What You Can Say" topic in your on-device Help.
- When I use Vlingo's dialer, why is there an extra dialog box with the letters "abuid" in it? It's preventing the auto-dialer from working.
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Beginning with iPhone operating system 3.0, Apple has added a new dialog box which affects all third-party applications that dial the phone. After the auto-dial timer finishes counting down, you will see a dialog box containing the phone number you're dialing, followed by the letters "abuid," followed by another number. The dialog box should give you options to Call or Cancel. It's not actually Vlingo displaying this extra step. It's the iPhone itself. The only known way to disable it would be to revert to an earlier version of the iPhone operating system.
It's not known whether this additional dialog box is intentional or a bug. We do know that bug reports have been filed with Apple. We have also received reports that occasionally the phone will not dial even after you press Call. Please understand that Vlingo does not control this behavior - all applications not built by Apple display the same behavior.
- I have set the voice dialer to Auto-Dial, but Vlingo is not auto dialing. Why?
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Even if auto dial is turned on, Vlingo will not always auto dial a contact in every case. First, it will auto dial only if it is sufficiently confident that it didn't make a recognition error and is dialing the correct name you spoke. Second, it will only auto dial if the contact to dial is unambiguous. For example, if you have two contacts named Mike Smith and Mike Jones in your address book, each with multiple phone numbers, and you say 'call Mike', it will not auto-dial. You would need to say something like 'call Mike Smith at home'.
Vlingo has settings you can use to turn auto-dial on or off, and also to adjust its behavior. Use the Auto-dial sensitivity or Auto-dial behavior setting if Vlingo is either auto-dialing too frequently or not frequently enough. Here's where to find these auto-dial settings:
- For BlackBerry, Nokia, and Windows Mobile phones: Vlingo Options -> Settings -> Applications
- For iPhone: Vlingo Tools -> Phone
If you're still unsure why Vlingo isn't auto-dialing, look in the text box that shows what Vlingo thought it heard. If the spelling of this text doesn't exactly match the spelling in your address book, that may be the problem.
- What are Facebook and Twitter, and how do I get a login and password?
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Facebook and Twitter are social networking services. Other companies, not Vlingo, run these services. Vlingo gives you the ability to update your Facebook and Twitter status by speaking into your phone.
Vlingo doesn't require any user names or passwords. Facebook and Twitter, however, require user names and passwords for logging in. When you use Vlingo to log into your Facebook and Twitter accounts you must enter the Facebook and Twitter user names and passwords.
If you want to register for one of those social networking services and are unable to log in, or have forgotten your user name or password, please contact http://www.Facebook.com or http://www.Twitter.com for assistance.
- Can I do something to improve how Vlingo capitalizes the words I say?
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Currently, Vlingo capitalizes words automatically. Improving automated handling of capitalization is something we are working on now. When we make improvements to the way Vlingo capitalizes words, it happens on our servers, so you won't even need to download anything new to get the benefits.
- How do I get Vlingo to insert punctuation without having to type it?
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You can simply tell Vlingo the punctuation that you want it to use as you speak. For example, you can say things like "question mark", "comma", and "period" and Vlingo will put in the corresponding punctuation mark.
Here are some of the punctuation marks that Vlingo supports: . ? ! , ; : * - + = @ # and &
Try some others as well. We periodically add new punctuation marks. If you frequently use punctuation that we don't support, tell us about it. If Vlingo is unable to recognize a punctuation character that you are speaking, you can still type punctuation marks and other symbols the same way you would in any other phone screen.
- When I log in to Facebook, Vlingo is either very slow, or crashes and brings me back to my iPhone home screen. How do I fix this problem?
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we see this crash most frequently on devices running iPhone 2.0 or 2.1 software. The cause is a memory leak in the iPhone operating system. When you restart Vlingo after crashing in Facebook, you should find you are successfully logged in to Facebook. However, to keep this problem from recurring, if you have to log in to Facebook again, you need to upgrade your phone to iPhone OS 2.2.
To upgrade, connect your phone to iTunes. You should be immediately prompted to upgrade. If you're not prompted, click on your iPhone under the Devices tab on the left, then click on the Summary tab at the top of the window. In the Version section, you will see that a newer version of iPhone software is available. Click the Update button.
If you're already running iPhone 2.2 and Vlingo crashes in Facebook, it's a sign that you needs to reset your phone. You can reset by pressing and holding both buttons on the phone for at least 10 seconds. Don't release them if you see a red Power Off slider or if the screen goes black. Continue to hold the buttons until the Apple logo appears. Once the phone powers back on, you should no longer have the Facebook crash problem.
- Why did I get a timeout message when using Vlingo on my iPhone?
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The most recent Apple iPhone software, OS version 2.2, contains significant network improvements that eliminate many network timeouts. We highly recommend using this version. If you're not sure what version you have, to display the version number, go to your iPhone Settings -> General -> About. The version number should start with 2.2. If it doesn't, we recommend connecting your iPhone to iTunes and downloading this version.
As soon as you connect to iTunes, you should see a message asking if you want to download a new version of the OS. Click Download and Install. If you don't see the download message, click the Summary tab and then click the Update button in the Version section of the screen.
If you're already running iPhone 2.2, the most common reason for recognition timeouts is slow network speed, particularly if you're not on a 3G network. The ideal solution is to connect to a WiFi network, but that's not always possible. If you're not using WiFi, check your network signal strength in the upper left hand corner of your iPhone. Vlingo works best when you have at least 3 bars of coverage.
Occasionally Vlingo times out even with a strong network connection. This problem is less common, but can occur if you spoke for a particularly long time or if Vlingo is having difficulty recognizing what you said. For more information, see the Accuracy section of these FAQs.
You can also experiment by speaking fewer sentences at a time to break your message into chunks. Speaking your message in phrases this way can help you avoid timeouts. Once Vlingo displays the first chunk of text on screen, just position the cursor where you want the additional text to be inserted and speak again, and so on.
- I don't want Vlingo to filter any words I say by replacing them with asterisks '*****'. How do I stop this content filtering?
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You can turn the filter off by changing the following settings:
- For BlackBerry/Windows: "Content Filtering" setting under "Vlingo Options".
- For Nokia: "Profanity Filtering" setting under "Vlingo Options".
- For iPhone: "Content Filtering" setting under "Vlingo Tools".
By default, Vlingo filters words that some people may find offensive. We don't do it to censor any of the words you've just said, but rather to make sure that if Vlingo misunderstands some of your words, it doesn't mistakenly return anything that some people may find offensive.
- Why do I see a "Restricted URL" error message when I use Vlingo for Web search?
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This error message occurs because of a configuration setting on your iPhone that restricts the Safari browser. If this restriction was set by someone else, like your system administrator, ask to see if it can be removed on your phone so you can make full use of Vlingo Web search functionality. If it is not a system restriction, you can change it yourself. Just follow these steps to get full Vlingo Web search functionality:
- Go into iPhone Settings.
- Select General.
- You will see that the entry labeled Restrictions is set to On.
- Select Restrictions.
- Enter your Restrictions passcode.
- Set Safari to ON.
- Exit Settings and restart Vlingo.
At this point, Vlingo Web search should work correctly.
- I downloaded Vlingo from the App Store, so why didn't it didn't show up on my iPhone?
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If you downloaded to iTunes, you must sync your iPhone with iTunes. Before you sync, make sure you've set iTunes to sync all applications, or else make sure the box next to 'Vlingo' is checked. Then, make sure Vlingo has completed downloading before you sync with your iPhone.
We've found that the iPhone holds up to 9 pages of applications. If you have more than 9 pages of applications, when you try to download more applications, they won't show up on the phone until you delete some other applications on your phone.
If these solutions do not resolve your problem, please contact Apple (not Vlingo) for assistance.
- When I run Voice Dial Setup to index my address book, Vlingo hangs or freezes. How can I fix this problem?
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We've learned that some users are experiencing a problem where Vlingo does not complete the contact list indexing, and the only way out is to press the Home button. We've collected logs from a number of users, and we're currently working on a fix for the problem. When a fix is available, you will see the update notice on your iPhone and in the App Store.
- None of the answers to these FAQs answers my question. How can I contact you?
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If none of the answers on the FAQ page answered your question, please send us a note. The best way to do that is by filling out our Contact Support page from your phone or computer browser. If you are having a problem, please send us as much detail as you can including:
- Where you were in the application.
- What you were trying to do.
- What behavior you observed from the application.
- The exact text of any error message or other response you received.
The more specific you are, the better we can help you.