All of a sudden, I lost the little microphone icon in my default SMS text application on the T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S3 on Android 4.3.
formatting link
This is an important omission, since I do offline speech-to-text SMS text messages (I almost never use my fat fingers to text).
To get back that offline microphone app, I suspect I need to *install* something, because it *was* there from the beginning - but now it's (suddenly) gone!
But what free app do I download to get *back* that little microphone?
I don't know if this applies to you but a friend of mine said he had that for a time and later found out it was only a free trial and then they wantted money. He no longer has it.
Well, if I knew what had put the little offline microphone into the default keyboard in the first place, I could look up the terms and conditions - but I don' think it was trialware because the voice-to-text microphone was on the phone for more than a year.
That keyboard microphone disappeared about the time I upgraded to Android 4.3.
What I've done, in the meantime, is just now I installed a dozen purported offline voice-to-text applications.
Maybe one of those will bring the microphone back.
Check settings, language & input, mine works (v4.0.4) and is set to default to Google keyboard, Google voice typing is set to automatic ...should place a microphone on keyboard when you tap input area!
I apologize for not being specific enough in the request.
What I'm trying to accomplish, is, speaking into the phone, using the microphone of the phone instead of the keyboard, and having that spoken sentence transcribed into an SMS text message.
I'm pretty sure "something" deep inside the operating system is corrupted, since I've uninstalled and re-installed multiple keyboards, and a half-dozen voice-to-sms programs, and all those speech-to-text programs complain about a missing underlying hook: RuntimeError: No activity found to handle intent {act=android.speech.action.RECOGNIZE_SPEECH (has extras)}
At this point, I probably need to either find someone who knows what that underlying program actually is; or, if it's an inconspicuous part of the Android operating system, then I need to re-install the OS.
Is there a way to update the Android operating system on a T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S3 running Android 4.3 when the operating system is slightly corrupted (but otherwise up to date already)?
Every carrier has its own suite of installed apps. I have a Credo phone. I get Google Play, Plus Samsung and Sprint Stores. You should be able to flash it back to Factory. Backup your data files onto a removeable. Remove it. Then Restore.
This happened to me on Android 4.4.2. I got the microphone back. I don't know if 4.2 is the same, but maybe it is. Try this:
Go to Settings->Language & Input and make sure Google Voice Typing is checked.
I know you've done that, but that's just half of what needs to be done.
Then touch Language, and select English. Without that, I think the program still won't give you the microphone because it has to know what language you're using before it can transcribe voice.
If you see an 'Auto' option for language, you can experiment with it, but I don't think it will work. I think you need to use 'English'.
If that works or fails, let us know.
I got voice typing back by a much more circuitous route but I think the above is all I really had to do.
The above advice came from a fellow name H Pham on the Yahoo Tracfone Users group. If this works, he's the guy who deserves the credit. If it doesn't work I'll tell you the terrible way I got it working, which involved downloading Google Translate.
One way or another, I'm pretty sure it will work and I think it very likely that it's a configuration problem, not a problem with needing to download software. I think my downloading Google Translate caused Google Translate to set the right configuration settings for me. I don't think the software itself was needed.
ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.