Regulars here will remember that I'm [URL="http://dpnow.com/forum2/showthread.php?t=9816"]very unhappy with my mobile phone network[/URL] so I have been researching a move to a different network. This may be an opportunity to upgrade my phone and I have been catching up with all the latest smartphone technologies.

Although serious use of a smartphone for photography is still not there in my view, I'm very impressed with the speed at which general phone features have progressed. And there are one or two that we will probably see in cameras sooner or later.

One of these, I wonder, is speech recognition. I first saw speech recognition demonstrated on a hand-held pocket computer some ten years ago, but it has only really been used in a simplified form on phones for smart dialling from your phone's contacts,or for hands-free answering. But the latest smartphones using Google's Android operating system have a much more powerful implementation of speech control. For example it's at the heart of the new Google Navigation function; you can use plain English phrases to tell the phone where you want to navigate to and to control certain navigation options.

So how about chatting to your camera?Without lifting your eye from the viewfinder you could be telling your camera to do things like this; "Set aperture to f/5.6, turn on image stabilisation, change focus mode to manual, switch on histogram..." - could you see yourself doing that? In my case, I don't see why not. It's a logical extension of touch screen control, which an increasing number of cameras are offering. You could even use a voice command to tell the camera to make the exposure, which would be good if you were using a tripod but didn't have a cable release with you.

Is this futuristic nonsense, or do you agree that it will be here sooner or later - have your voice :) and let me know!