I bought a $200 Samsung android phone to use Live Transcribe, primarily for technical meetings discussing public water shortage problems in our rural county--only to learn that most places have no WiFi or very weak WiFi available. I have zero cell reception at home, and the WiFi from our modem is too weak for phone calls...but, occasionally, Live Transcribe starts running, without being asked, only catching a few random words. Sometimes, it's difficult to shut it down, which is extremely annoying. I tried Otter, but found it simply can't report technical discussions well enough to be helpful. Fortunately, I've now gotten my newly-bilateral Meniere's in remission, so can puzzle out what people are saying for the most part. I was amazed that after a year of being virtually deaf, when I got the disease under control my hearing returned to about the level it had been before I went bilateral over a year ago. The last remission lasted over 30 years and I'm 78, so, hopefully, I'll only need to deal with increasing age-related deafness in my future. I'm positive that the 20-year guarantee on my new septic tank field will be adequate!

Android vs. IPhone: The GPS while driving app is far more accurate with proper pronounciations for Android, but the GPS for off-road wilderness use is much weaker for Android, at least the apps I've found, than for IPhone. I found that trying to follow discussions on any phone adds problems, meaning that you find yourself fussing with the phone to make the mic more effective or point it toward the current speaker, which only adds to the difficulty of following technical discussions when you can't hear most of the words. Looking at your phone means that you miss many of the facial expressions/body language we've learned to use to interpret what we think we're hearing. I've learned how to "fake it" for simple conversation, filling in for the words I don't hear or can't understand.

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