Jelly Bean broke Droid 4 voice recognition

[GregCMCSE]

<RANT>

I loved my Verizon Motorola Droid 4 and HX-550 bluetooth headset.  Absolutely loved them.  There were a few quirks, like any smartphone, but only minor ones.  Voice recognition was awesome, never a misdial.  Occasionally it would have trouble understanding me correctly, but it would always ask when there was doubt by saying, "Did you say, call John Doe?" or every once in a while it would get it wrong and say, "Joan Doe, no mobile7, which location...".  Fine. Never once did it dial the wrong person automatically.

Late last night, I get the OTA prompt and accept it without too much thought.  This morning I discover that my GOOGLE CALENDARS are no longer opening automatically into the calendar app, my phone prompts me to turn Wi-Fi on all the time (then starts automatically doing so when I mistakenly answer "yes"), causing unnecessary excess battery drain, but worst of all -- NOW I AM AUTOMATICALLY DIALING THE WRONG PEOPLE WHEN TRYING TO MAKE A FRICKING HANDS-FREE CALL!!!

The first time it happened this morning, it was amusing -- I said "Call (my co. name) Meetingplace, Other 1".  It somehow converted that into "Call (my fiance's name) mobile" and just plain dialed it.  My fiance's name doesn't sound remotely like my company name -- the only thing they have in common is being two-syllable names.  "Meetingplace" starts with an "M", like my fiance's last name, but that's where all similarity ends as her last name is short, two syllable, and after the "M" doesn't share any phonetic similarities with "Meetingplace".  I apologized to her for the mis-dial, hung up, and tried again.  This time it again matched a name it had TRULY no business matching AND auto-dialed it immediately.  I shamefully hung up so I didn't have to apologize again as I was starting to be seriously late for my phone conference.  I resorted to using the speed-dial manually when I got to the next stop light and wrote it off to a fluke.

As it happens, I didn't initiate any phone calls during the day from my cell phone so it wasn't until I was on my way home that I encountered another problem.  This time, I DID say "Call (my fiance) on cell".  Clearly the use of the word "cell" caused my phone to have a seizure as it started doing an Internet search on something.  At least it didn't auto-dial 911 or something.  Not recognizing and prompting is one thing... completely mis-recognizing and automatically dialing without confirmation is completely unprofessional!  Absolutely unexpected from Verizon and Motorola!

Will someone, for the love of God, please tell me how to make my PHONE be able to be a PHONE again?!  I haven't found a need to root my phone or burn a custom ROM at all with this wonderful phone before, and now all I want to do is somehow kill "Google Voice Dialer" and find a way to reinstate "Voice Command" as the default when I press my bluetooth headset button.  If that means I have to sell my soul to the Russian Mafia, root and burn some hacked ROM into my phone, and pay a guy named "Guido" to "fix everything" for me, I think I'd be OK with that.  Verizon, Motorola, and Google REALLY MESSED UP my wonderful, stock Verizon Droid 4.  I'm furious because, among other things, I chose all 3 of those companies to deliberately to ENSURE that I'd have a nice, stable PHONE.

</RANT>

Seriously... I don't have the time to figure out how to set this right this week and I don't want to go through a second day with no voice recognition. I use my phone way too much for that and often make calls while in transit.  The last thing I want to do is spend the upcoming holiday weekend trying to figure out how to manually roll-back the OTA update or something.  Help!

Thanks in advance...

-- Greg

[vzw_customer_support]

Hi GregCMCSE!

I am sorry to learn that the latest software update is not playing well with your Bluetooth headset due to voice recognition issues. Other customers report that this issue can be solved by opening the phone application and pressing the microphone icon, then you will be presented with options to complete the action using GOOGLE SEARCH or VOICE CAMMAND. Select VOICE COMMAND and ALWAYS. Then pair your Bluetooth headset and test. I hope this also resolve this issue for you. Keep us posted.

AntonioC_VZWSupport
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