Hound by SoundHound: Review

In this story I’ll tell you my opinion about Hound, a new Google Now alternative for Android

How I got access

It’s quite difficult to get access to Hound. It’s currently at beta stage and I think normally only available in the US.

But I live in Germany, have no rooted device and no special connections to SoundHound. But after requesting a code I got it two days later. But how?

I think the simple trick is to request the code via their website. So the app can’t lookup your location and can block you. If you have a rooted device there a several tutorial online how to unlock Hound for you.

My first impression

I have to be honest and say that I only use Hound for some hours now. But I ran into a couple of problems:

  1. Hound can’t recognize my english: I tried to speak in German — doesn’t work (but that’s no problem because the whole app is still only avaible in english or some other languages but not german). But then I tried to speak english and I really tried to speak well and clearly but: Hound always understands something other! Why?? It is one of the main functions and very important for the app. You can also enter your question via your keyboard — but that takes long time…
  2. Partnerships: SoundHound / Hound seems to a have a couple of partnerships with different companies. But sometimes these companies only serve in the official supported countries…

But I also found a lot of positive aspects:

  1. It’s quite fast and I think faster than Google Now
  2. You don’t need to enable any history or something like this like you have to do for Google Now (one reason why I deinstalled the Google App…)
  3. Clean design: Hound looks really great!

Features

Here are some examples what you can do with Hound:

  1. Ask for the weather
  2. Let you show locations on a map or ask for directions
  3. Search for hotels or other accomodations
  4. Do a local search: Ask for sights or food shops etc.
  5. Search for a song or try to identify a song
  6. And funny thing: you can play games with Hound
  7. And much more…

Download

If you’re lucky and live somewhere in the US or have a rooted device it shouldn’t be difficult to download the app via Google Play. If this isn’t the case go to APKMirror and download it there (link). Of course you can get it via Aptoide or anyother app market too (if they have the apk).

For iOS soon too…

On soundhound.com they say Hound for iOS is coming soon too. I don’t know how fast the development of Hound is but it can take longer or less longer till the app is available for all Android and iOS users.

Screenshots

Here are some more screenshots and pictures I got via Google Play:

What do you think about Hound? Leave me a response…