Apple is reportedly testing offline dictation voice input for iOS devices. This according to a string of code located inside of the iOS 7 beta.
The code, which was discovered by Hamza Sood, is located inside of both iOS 7 betas, but it is not present in iOS 6. Currently, when an iOS user uses their voice to input text using Dictation, the iOS device will use software that uploads your speech to the cloud to be converted into text. Because this relies on an internet connection and a cloud backend, this could sometimes mean errors and long-loading times, as well as some unwanted data usage…
Future versions of iOS could allow an iOS device to process and convert speech to text on the device itself, without benefit of an internet connection. This would considerably speed up the process, allowing searches, text messages and notes, and more functions to take place quicker than is currently possible. While the functionality is not currently active in public builds of iOS 7, 9to5Mac is told that internal Apple devices do have the functionality up and running.
Sources also report that while local dictation is an option, the cloud-based dictation process is also present in the build.
