Fact of the Day:
A flock of crows is known as a murder.
"Facebook Addiction Disorder" is a mental disorder identified by
Psychologists.
Cherophobia is the fear of fun.
The Nexus 5 Claria Vox from Odin Mobile: A Talking Smartphone with a Keypad
Bill Holton
From the American Foundation for the Blind's Access World Magazine
Many people who are blind still prefer a feature phone over a
smartphone because they find dial pads easier to navigate and control than a
flat touchscreen. Indeed, in the January 2015 issue of AccessWorld we
<http://www.afb.org/afbpress/pub.asp?DocID=aw160103> reviewed the Odin VI, a
blind-friendly feature phone with a pre-enabled voice guide.
Read the review here;
<http://www.afb.org/afbpress/pub.asp?DocID=aw160103>
http://www.afb.org/afbpress/pub.asp?DocID=aw160103
In this article we will take a look at a brand new offering from Odin: the
Nexus 5 running Claria Vox. This phone works like a talking feature phone,
only this one is based on the Android operating system. The Nexus 5 includes
a suite of apps designed specifically for accessible, touch-button control,
but you can also operate the phone as a standard touchscreen device running
Android 4.4.2 KitKat, and enjoy the same features and apps as other
accessible smartphone users.
The Claria Vox Keypad
The Nexus 5 Claria Vox is a standard Google Nexus 5 smartphone with a
maximum 16 GB of memory (it's not possible to increase memory on the phone
with a micro SD card). The phone arrived in the original Nexus 5 packaging,
along with a micro USB charging cable and power adapter. The Nexus 5 Claria
Vox is a standard Android smartphone, with a Sleep/Wake button on the right
edge, Volume Up and Down buttons on the left, a headphone jack on the top
and a USB power port on the bottom. The phone does not have physical Home,
Back or Recent Apps buttons.
They phone's keypad and touch-button functionality is facilitated by a
tactile overlay. The Claria Vox arrives fitted with a black, rubber,
bumper-style phone case that covers the bottom half of the touchscreen with
a total of 19 small rectangular cutouts you touch like buttons--I'll refer
to these cutout areas as "buttons" or "keys" from here on. When your finger
meets the touchscreen glass exposed by these buttons, you can activate a
combination of standard Android controls and a feature-phone-style keypad.
The overlay includes three separate areas, which can best be described from
the bottom up: At the bottom center is the Android Home button. Above the
Home button are four rows of three keys each: a standard phone keypad. Use
these keys to enter numbers and letters the same way you do on a standard
feature phone. A small raised line just beneath the 5 key replaces the
customary raised dot. When you are in a text edit field, the Star (*) key
cycles through various punctuation marks and the Pound (#) key cycles
through numbers to lower and upper case letters. Other times the Star key
announces the time and date and the Pound key announces missed calls, text
messages, and the like.
A wide raised line separates the top of the keypad from two rows of buttons
that activate many of the Claria Vox controls. The two middle buttons in
these two rows are the Up and Down keys. To the left of the Up key is the
Menu button, which will either open the application specific menu button,
or, whenever you are in an edit field, accept voice dictation. To the right
is the Status/Correct button. In standard mode this button reports
connection and GPS status and battery connection. When in an edit field, it
acts as a backspace key.
To the left of the Down button is the OK button; to the right is the Android
Back button. Use the Back button to back out a screen and eventually return
to the main Home screen.
At first I found using the overlay a bit awkward. However, after I noticed
the two raised areas I found it somewhat easier to orient my fingers. I do
wish the separation between the top two command rows and the dial pad were
much wider, however. Reaching for the 2 button, for example, almost required
reaching to the very top of the overlay and then counting down three
buttons. If I didn't do it this way, all too often I would mistype, since I
am not accustomed to beginning a dial pad entry partway down the dial pad,
despite the raised separators.
My nails are trimmed fairly short, so I found it easy to point my fingertips
straight down into the recesses to reach the touchscreen. Women with longer
nails may find it difficult to do this, and may have to use the pads of
their fingertips and press just a bit harder on the overlay to activate the
buttons.
Using the Claria Vox Interface
My Nexus 5 arrived pre-charged, and when I turned it on it came up speaking
with the Talkback Android screen reader configured with the Google
text-to-speech voice set at a moderate speed and medium volume. Normally on
Android phones you must "Slide to unlock" in order to begin using the phone.
You must also do this with the Nexus 5, but you do not have to locate a
particular spot on the touch screen or move left to right. Merely slide a
finger in any direction against the exposed upper glass of the touchscreen
and Claria will announce: "Home.Phone, one of nine."
You are now on the Claria Vox home screen, and as you have probably guessed,
Phone is the first of nine Claria Vox applications. You can use the Up and
Down buttons to scroll through the list, or enter the number of the desired
option.
Phone
To answer a call, press the OK button; to reject a call, or hang up on an
existing call, press the Back button. The Claria Vox does not announce
caller ID by default, but a quick touch of the screen while the phone is
ringing prompts the announcement. Some may appreciate the privacy afforded
by this design. I tend to carry my phone in my pocket, however, and would
prefer to hear this announcement by default, which is not currently an
option.
Pressing the OK button at the Phone prompt calls up a menu of five options:
Dialer
Use this option to enter a phone number, then press the OK button to place
the call. You can also use the Dictate button at the uppermost left of the
overlay to speak the phone number you wish to dial. For me dictation worked
perfectly, even when I purposely mumbled a few of the digits.
Contacts
Use this option to search your contacts. Use the Up and Down buttons to
scroll through your list, or enter a letter (press the 8 key twice, quickly,
to enter a "U," for example). Pressing the Menu button offered options to
create or import a contact.
Call Log
This option presents a list of calls, and allows you to recall, text
message, or create a contact from the log.
Voice and Numeric Shortcuts
This option allows you to set speed dials and voice prompts for quicker
dialing.
Voicemail
I had difficulty setting up my voicemail. The first time you access this
option you are taken to the voicemail setup, where you are prompted to enter
a PIN. However, with the phone against my ear, I could not make dial
entries, and if I lowered the phone I could not hear the prompts. I was
advised by the company that pressing the OK button anytime during a call
toggles speaker phone mode. This worked, but it also pointed out a lack of
context-sensitive help.
Text Messages
Use this option to send, read, and reply to text messages. Current feature
phone users will be familiar with the steps to compose and review messages.
You may be surprised how quickly you can send out a message when you use
dictation, however. Speak some text and Claria Vox will offer up multiple
responses. I almost always received 100% accurate responses and could select
the first option presented, but I could also cursor down to select from
other, slightly different responses.
E-mail
The e-mail option was easy to set up using my Gmail account. Unfortunately,
however, Claria Vox did not download my Gmail contacts or calendar. I rather
suspect this is a limitation of Android overlays, since I experience the
same issue with the EqualEyes Android suite, which I
<http://www.afb.org/afbpress/pub.asp?DocID=aw141203> reviewed in the
December 2013 issue of AccessWorld.
See below for a solution to this problem.
Vision Aids
This option includes several useful camera-based apps:
Optical Character Recognition
Claria Vox includes a basic Optical Character Recognition (OCR) program. It
is no match for something like KNFB Reader, but I found it serviceable,
especially for flat, printed pages. Activate the app, hold the phone over
the page to be scanned, then touch the screen or press OK. You can read the
results using the Up and Down buttons, and then save the text, image, or
both.
Color and Light Detectors
With either of these apps enabled, simply touch the screen or press OK to
get a reading. I found both of these very handy.
Camera
Here you can use your camera to snap a photo or take a video. Press the 1
key to toggle the light. One extremely useful feature was the ability to
give an image or video a description before saving it to the Gallery. The
camera app also includes a bar code identifier that will search the Internet
for scanned products. I have never had much luck using such apps, and for me
the Claria Vox proved no exception.
Utilities
The Claria Vox utilities include a Notes app you can use to create and edit
notes, including text you save using the OCR app. You can also accessibly
browse the Android File Manager, set alarms, create and listen to voice
memos, access the calculator, consult your calendar and enter new
appointments, and check your local or remote weather.
Claria Vox also includes an accessible GPS app based on Google Maps and
navigation. The entry fields say "Enter Address Only," but I was able to
dictate a location, such as the name of my local hospital, and the app
entered the information perfectly. You can set the travel mode, alert
announcement distance, and location update frequency. The GPS does not have
"look around," capabilities.
Multimedia
The Nexus 5 Claria Vox offers several additional apps that enable access to
smartphone mobile capabilities using a talking, feature-phone interface.
Mobile Web Browsing
Some feature phones offer rudimentary Web browsing, but none do it
especially well. The ability to browse the Web on the go may be one of the
main reasons you may be considering stepping up to a smartphone, and the
good news is that the Claria Vox overlay offers up a capable Web experience.
Webpages you call up--via voice search, bookmark, direct URL entry, or
pressing OK on an already loaded page--will read to the end automatically.
Pressing the 9 key will pause and restart page voicing. You can also use the
Up and Down buttons to move through the page. Pressing the 1, 2, 3, or 4
buttons will filter the page by element, links, headings, and forms
respectively, similar to a computer browser's quick navigation shortcut
keys. Press 3 for example, then use the Down button to navigate by headings.
Press the 1 key to continue element by element.
I found browsing with the Claria Vox browser significantly easier than with
any feature phone I have evaluated. I would not trade in my touchscreen
browser, however.
Claria Vox Radio
This app gathers links to many popular radio stations from around the world.
The listings were a bit out of date--several of the streams I tried returned
error messages. But I was able to add other MP3 or MPU streams, and then add
these stations to my favorites.
Claria Vox News
The News app offers a list of news sources sorted by country. The US list
currently includes Voice of America, CNN News, ESPN, ABC 17 News, and the
Los Angeles Times. You can listen to the articles being read in full, or use
the Up and Down buttons, but, frustratingly, the web browsing 9 button to
toggle reading off and on did not work. I also wished there were a way to
add extra RSS feeds to the news reader.
Claria Vox MP3 Player
This app plays the music files you have downloaded onto your device. At
first I was unable to fully test this app because USB tethering to my
computer would not work by default. After consulting with an Odin
representative, I was instructed to enter the Android Settings menu, access
the Storage option and enable a USB connection. This worked, but hopefully
the company will enable tethering by default soon.
Either pressing the OK button or touching the Nexus screen acts as a
Play/Pause button. The player also played some, but not all, of the videos I
tried. It had no trouble with MP4 files, but AVI files would not play. Nor
would the short video I created to my iPhone and e-mailed to myself.
The Claria Vox Book Reader
The Claria Vox Book reader will open Daisy 2, MP3 books and text files. It
is also supposed to open Audible books. Unfortunately, currently, the first
time you log into your Audible account using a new device, you must complete
an inaccessible CAPCHA. There is a link for blind users, but on the Claria
Vox browser, this did nothing.
Bookshare and BARD Mobile Talking books are also not supported on the Claria
Vox.
Android Applications
You can run all of your device's standard Android apps on the phone using
Talkback. There are nineteen apps listed in this menu option, including
Google Play Store, Google Wallet and Android Device Settings. If you invoke
any of these you will be taken out of the Claria Vox skin and placed into
standard Android mode running Talkback with a slightly different voice,
which makes it easy to keep track of which mode you are in. Most of the
Android standard Talkback swipe and tap gestures are available to you using
the top half of the phone, which is not covered by the tactile overlay.
However if you wish to enter text you will need to remove the tactile
overlay in order to access the onscreen keyboard. You can also install and
use a Bluetooth keyboard.
A discussion of Talkback accessibility is beyond the scope of this review.
However I will note that the Up and Left home gesture will return you to the
Claria Vox software menu. If you added any Play Store apps to the phone they
now show up in the Android Applications list. Also, if you log into your
Google account using the Play Store or another app, your contact lists will
now appear in the Claria Vox phone, text messaging, and e-mail apps.
Updates
This option enables a quick way to update the Claria Vox apps, add new
Claria apps as they are released, and update your phone's operating system.
During my evaluation of the Nexus 5 Claria Vox there were no updates to
install. I would have thought that a Nexus phone would be eligible to
upgrade to the newest Android version, Lollipop, but this was not the case.
Settings
This option offers access to all of the standard Android settings. This is
where you go to join a Wi-Fi network, and enable Bluetooth, GPS, and NFC.
Other settings include voice language and speed, color scheme, and text
size, and braille display settings.
One setting that is unique to the Claria Vox is the Android Interaction
setting. The first option in this menu is Home Button Long Click. Enable
this toggle and you can perform a long touch of the Home button to toggle
back and forth between the Claria Vox app list and the default Android Home
screen.
Recommendations
The Nexus 5 Claria Vox software could definitely benefit from some
upgrading. Odin did not create this software; they licensed it from a
British company. Consequently, it will remain to be seen how responsive the
developers will be with software updates and adding new apps, such as the
ability to read BARD Mobile Talking Books.
All that said, I believe that for some people with visual impairments the
Nexus 5 Claria Vox will be an excellent mobile experience. As noted above,
many people with visual impairments feel much more confident using a keypad,
and for these individuals the Claria Vox tactile overlay offers a
one-of-a-kind way to pair the ease of using a keypad with the power of a
smartphone.
Another reason I suspect many people with visual impairments are reluctant
to upgrade to a smartphone is the all-or-nothing change such a move
represents. It takes time to learn to use a touch screen reader effectively,
and during this learning period your phone may seem less than useless. With
the Nexus 5 Claria Vox you can spend the day using the phone in keypad mode,
then, when you have free time, you can explore the more advanced Android
features and develop touch screen skills at your own pace (and with the
excellent help of Odin tech support and a series of audio tutorials I am
told the company will soon release).
Product Information
Product: Nexus 5 Claria Vox
Available from: <http://odinmobile.com/> Odin Mobile,
<http://odinmobile.com/> http://odinmobile.com/
855-217-9459
Price: $599 (comes unlocked for both the T-Mobile/Odin and AT&T networks)
"If any- one is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed
away; behold, all things have become new."
2 Corinthians 5:17,
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Robert Acosta, President
Helping Hands for the Blind
(818) 998-0044
www.helpinghands4theblind.org
