Google Assistant on Alcatel Go Flip 3

[Rusty69]

My new phone is really excellent except for one feature, which happens to be the one that caused me to buy this model in the first place.

First of all, despite a YouTube demo that showed punctuation commands working perfectly when using voice to text, they do NOT work on my phone.  "Period", "question mark", "comma", etc. all print out as words in my text messages, and have to be removed.  I have tried several times, changing speed of speeech and other tricks.

Secondly, GA allowed me to enter all my contacts with very few spelling errors.  One of those, Pamela, was the first to be input, and was spelled correctly, but when I tried to voice dial "call Pamela" the phone responded that there was no such contact.  Conversely, when I asked "call Home", I got a female voice offering three contacts because I had entered two of them as "xxxx at home" or "yyyy at home" in addition to my own number which was simply input as "Home".

Does anyone have similar (or better) experiences in this area?  Do I have a dodgy phone?

[FidoJulien]

Hey @Rusty69

I'm sad to read you're having trouble with your new phone. The best option would be to contact Alcatel's tech support using one of the options here. They'll be able to take a look into this with you and hopefully help you fix it! 

[Rusty69]

A conversation with Alcatel was started a week ago, and the result has been thoroughly unsatisfactory. The agent has suggested only simple fixes involving reboot the phone, check for updates, and finally reset to factory defaults (the latter employing instructions involving Android devices) - go figure!  All this over the course of three frustrating e-mail dialogues.  My final response 2 days ago, was to point out that the updates ran the moment I booted the phone up the first time I got it, and that the factory reset to remove data and downloaded apps was hugely unfounded due to the fact that Google Assistant is an embedded function anyway, and there are no other non-standard apps installed by me.  I requested that they issue an RMA so that I can get the phone replaced.