A*STAR embeds speaker verification tech in Lenovo smartphone

The speaker verification technology jointly developed by A*STAR's Institute for Infocomm Research (I²R) and Chinese web services firm Baidu has made its commercial debut via Lenovo's new smartphone, the A586, unveiled November 30.

The adoption of the speaker verification technology in the Lenovo A586 smartphone operating system marks a major milestone for Baidu-I²R Research Centre (BIRC), the first overseas joint R&D facility of Baidu which officially opened in Singapore last July.

Dr. Li Haizhou, co-director of BIRC said, "We are delighted that our months of hard work and efforts are bearing fruits with the launch of the Lenovo A586 that incorporates our Speaker Verification technology. This is a strong endorsement of user-inspired research and cutting-edge speech and language technology in I²R and BIRC. We look forward to more innovative products from the Baidu and I²R partnership."

With the built-in voiceprint feature, an authorised user can unlock the device through a spoken passphrase, eliminating the need for finger swipe patterns or PINs common in most smartphones in the market today.