Notta's New Device Clips to Your iPhone to Make Voice Typing Better

Notta has released a product called SpeakOn—a small device that attaches to iPhones with a magnetic clip. It's designed to make voice-to-text typing work better by giving you a dedicated microphone and processor, rather than relying on the microphone built into your phone.

The device weighs about an ounce (25 grams). You press and hold a button to start recording, and it picks up sound from about two feet away. Unlike the iPhone's built-in dictation feature, which uses multiple microphones all around the phone, SpeakOn has its own single microphone and does the work of turning speech into text on the device itself before sending the typed words to your iPhone.

What It Can Do

SpeakOn transcribes your speech in real time and can remove filler words like "um" and "uh" as you go. It can also format your words into lists if you ask it to. The device works in 12 languages: English, Japanese, Korean, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Arabic.

The battery lasts about 10 hours of continuous use, and about 20 days if you're just letting it sit idle. A full charge takes about an hour. This means you could use it all day at work without needing to recharge.

How Much It Costs

Notta is selling SpeakOn for $129. That gets you 5,000 words of transcription per week. If you need more, you can pay $12 per month for unlimited transcription.

Right now, SpeakOn only works with iPhones. There are no plans announced for Android phones. This is a real limitation—Android phones are used by far more people worldwide, and many businesses use a mix of iPhones and Android devices.

Who Might Use This

This device could be useful for people whose jobs involve a lot of typing from speech. That includes doctors writing patient notes, lawyers taking notes in court, reporters gathering quotes in the field, and writers drafting ideas. If you work at a desk, the two-foot audio range works well. If you're trying to dictate while walking around a noisy office, it might not work as smoothly.

The translation feature opens doors for people who work in multiple languages across different countries, but it's worth noting that no one has tested how good those translations actually are. Translation technology can struggle with specialized words and jargon.

Why This Matters—and the Real Question

Apple's own dictation feature has gotten much better in recent iPhones because of artificial intelligence built directly into the phone's processor. Google also offers very accurate speech-to-text through its online tools. There are also existing apps like Otter.ai and Dragon Anywhere that already do voice-to-text typing on iPhones.

So here's the practical question: SpeakOn's real advantage is that it has its own microphone and processor separate from your phone. But does that actually produce noticeably better typing accuracy when you compare it side-by-side with what your iPhone already does. For people doing professional work where getting every word right matters, that could be worth the $129 and the $12 monthly fee. For most people just wanting to send a text or take quick notes, the cost is harder to justify when your phone already does this for free.

SpeakOn also only works with iPhones, which limits who can use it, especially in workplaces where people use different kinds of phones.