A major issue with the Samsung Gear S3’s text message voice input seems to have been left unaddressed for several months now, according to recent reports. The broken feature has been preventing Gear S3 users in the United States from using their voice to create and send a text message through the smartwatch, with an error message that states “Voice input fail.” The problem doesn’t always prevent users from relying on the functionality and instead manifests itself after several successful attempts at using text message voice input, some owners of the wearable claim. Keep in mind that while the issue is affecting the voice input for text messages, it appears that Samsung’s S Voice app is still working as intended. The problem appears to have originated from an update released by Samsung in April, which brought a plethora of improvements and new features, including enhancements to the Alti and Barometer functionalities, as well as the Samsung Health app.
It remains unclear how the issue troubling the voice input for text messages on the Gear S3 came to be. While Gear S3 users who use the American English as their default language are affected, the feature seems to be working fine for Gear S3 smartwatches whose language is switched to UK English, indicating that the problem is limited to U.S. users, though nothing has been confirmed by Samsung as of this writing. This led some users of the wearable to change the language of their Gear S3 to British English, though it resulted in another problem: the smartwatch could hardly understand the accent of American English speakers in this particular mode.
Since switching the Gear S3’s language to British English still leaves room for issues, other users have resorted to a more intricate solution: pressing the keyboard input button and moving the smartwatch in circles before directing a voice command to the Gear S3. However, that workaround has never been proven to be completely reliable, after some users still encountered troubles with text message voice input. Samsung has yet to comment on the matter in an official capacity and it is still not clear when the Korean tech giant is planning to roll out a software fix for the problem.