Hands-Free Texting, Notifications for Specific E-mail Accounts, Music Search?

[DanMcD674]

Hands-Free Texting, Notifications for Specific E-mail Accounts, Music Search

My much-loved Lumia 640 died earlier this month when some water seeped inside the case (the only flaw it had, IMO). I replaced it with a 650 and I'm finding that Windows 10 mobile is far less user-friendly, and there isn't much help information available. So.

1) Connecting the phone to Bluetooth is easy enough, as is setting driving mode. But Windows 10 doesn't notify me when a text comes in, offer to read it, or let me reply hands-free. I can't find a setting for this. How do I use hands-free texting?

2) In WP 8.1 I could choose which e-mail accounts I got notifications for. I have numerous e-mail accounts on this phone but each is used for a different purpose and I don't want to get notifications for all of them. Is there a way to set whether a not I get a notification when an e-mail arrives for a specific account?

3) Is music search gone? in WP 8.1 if I wanted to learn the name of the song that was playing I could hit the search button and then activate music search by tapping the musical note icon. That icon is missing in Windows 10 mobile. Of course I can just use Shazam, but it was more convenient to not have to open a separate app,and I found the built-in search generally worked better. I already read that they took the QR scanner out of the new OS (another decision I don't understand), is the case the same with music search?

Thank you for any help you can give me.

 

[anthonyng]

Re: Hands-Free Texting, Notifications for Specific E-mail Accounts, Music Search

If your Cortana is not prompting your car to tell you about text message, in bluetooth settings, choose the Alternate connection method.

email, open outlook, goto manage account and each one can have notifications settings set

Kinda thought you could let cortana listen to your song to tell you about it

 

[DanMcD674]

Re: Hands-Free Texting, Notifications for Specific E-mail Accounts, Music Search

Thank you for the help with the notifications. I was looking for it under account settings, not in Outlook itself. (It still bothers me that Outlook is all one app now, rather than having each account represented as a separate app.)

With regard to my other questions, I guess I should have been more specific. How do I get hands-free texting without Cortana? I have Cortana turned off and have no intention of turning it on. In Windows Phone 8.1 that wasn't a problem. Ditto with the music search, it was built into the phone search. Are you saying these things are only available as part of Cortana now? Because that would really suck.

 

[Bobvfr]

Re: Hands-Free Texting, Notifications for Specific E-mail Accounts, Music Search

For the identifying of music you do need Cortana, put it in listening mode and the music symbol pops up and away you go.

The only way that I know to hands free text is Cortana, if you use voice it would be Hey Cortana, send a text to "XXXXXX" then wait for her to go back into listening mode, say your text then wait and say send it. There may be other apps that do it, but never tried any.

Why are you so anti Cortana ?

 

[DanMcD674]

Re: Hands-Free Texting, Notifications for Specific E-mail Accounts, Music Search

It's not Cortana specifically, it's the concept of the personal digital assistant (so, also Siri and Google Now). A smartphone is not a person, it's a tool. It's an appliance. I would no sooner speak to it than I would to a toaster or a washing machine. I don't want it to try to engage me in conversation, or tell me jokes, or make suggestions, or be my friend. I want it to take my input and give me back output. That's all.

Thanks for responding. It's really a shame that they are trying to force Cortana onto the user in Windows 10 Mobile. It makes the OS far less useful to me. I guess I'll just have to live without hands-free. Hope nobody expects a quick answer to a text when I'm driving.

 

[Bobvfr]

Re: Hands-Free Texting, Notifications for Specific E-mail Accounts, Music Search

Not saying you can shut down all of Cortana's features, but from the settings you can for example not have it respond to "Hey Cortana", that by it's very nature would make hands free difficult to at least initiate.

There is then a listen button if you do want to say something like "Send a message to XXXX" but saying Hey Cortana is far easier.

Cortana is one of those tools, the more you put in the more you get out, but if you want it pretty close to dumb you can have it that way.

 

[DanMcD674]

Re: Hands-Free Texting, Notifications for Specific E-mail Accounts, Music Search

Well, maybe I'll try enabling it and customizing the features to make it more suited to my liking. I don't think the Lumia 650 supports the "Hey Cortana" interface anyway, because it's not powerful enough. As I understand it only the 950/XL can do that. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[astondg]

Re: Hands-Free Texting, Notifications for Specific E-mail Accounts, Music Search

I want it to take my input and give me back output. That's all.

And that's really all Cortana does. Voice is just another style of input and it's optional, text input is also supported for searching and there's a button for identifying music. You can enable Cortana and use it in a very similar way to the voice & search controls in WP8.

An AI assistant like Cortana or Google Now is just another tool. I wouldn't dismiss them because the makers try to give them a personality, so far at least that part is mostly optional and easy to ignore.

 

[DanMcD674]

Re: Hands-Free Texting, Notifications for Specific E-mail Accounts, Music Search

It's my understanding that Cortana doesn't even work unless you allow for all the intrusive stuff it does that captures all the information about your usage so it can "predict" what you need ahead of time. As a privacy-minded individual, I don't want that. I don't need my phone to try to predict my actions, and I don't want Microsoft or any other company to have access to my usage statistics. So Cortana is off.

Voice input or hands-free usage shouldn't require all the baggage that goes with an "AI" personal assistant. Bundling them together is a huge mistake IMO.

 

[Maurizio Troso]

Re: Hands-Free Texting, Notifications for Specific E-mail Accounts, Music Search

It's my understanding that Cortana doesn't even work unless you allow for all the intrusive stuff it does that captures all the information about your usage so it can "predict" what you need ahead of time. As a privacy-minded individual, I don't want that. I don't need my phone to try to predict my actions, and I don't want Microsoft or any other company to have access to my usage statistics. So Cortana is off.

Voice input or hands-free usage shouldn't require all the baggage that goes with an "AI" personal assistant. Bundling them together is a huge mistake IMO.

Siri, Hey Google, and others worked thanks to a central AI since years. You are asking for old vocal recognization installed in hardware, like old Nokias with Symbian.
Results were random, so times changed and tecnology improved.

 

[DanMcD674]

Re: Hands-Free Texting, Notifications for Specific E-mail Accounts, Music Search

"Improved" is a relative term. I don't think personal digital assistant software is an improvement at all. The "we'll track everything you do in order to try to think for you" concept is garbage. I'll continue to not be lazy and think for myself, thank you very much.

But I'm not asking for some sort of simplified voice recognition, because as stated, I don't want talk to my phone. I think it's stupid. But I don't need voice recognition for my phone to tell me that a text has come in and offer to read it to me when the phone is connected to bluetooth. The Windows Phone 8 system worked perfectly. Getting rid of that in order to force an invasion of privacy like Cortana is terrible.

 

[Maurizio Troso]

Re: Hands-Free Texting, Notifications for Specific E-mail Accounts, Music Search

"Improved" is a relative term. I don't think personal digital assistant software is an improvement at all. The "we'll track everything you do in order to try to think for you" concept is garbage. I'll continue to not be lazy and think for myself, thank you very much.

But I'm not asking for some sort of simplified voice recognition, because as stated, I don't want talk to my phone. I think it's stupid. But I don't need voice recognition for my phone to tell me that a text has come in and offer to read it to me when the phone is connected to bluetooth. The Windows Phone 8 system worked perfectly. Getting rid of that in order to force an invasion of privacy like Cortana is terrible.

Respectable personal opinion, as the past very long debate about Win10 telemetry.
If you are using a desktop or notebook, and Google, you are already without privacy since years
You next Android phone will do da same thing for doing what you ask for.

However, I sell you my perfectly working Nokia N78 with digital assistant and Garming on, it works offline