In Brief Posted: 6:41 AM PDT · April 24, 2026 Image Credits: Ivan Mehta In the last few years, AI-powered dictation tools have taken off. In addition to existing dictation apps like Wispr Flow, Superwhisper, Willow, and Monologue, new ones are being launched every week. On Thursday, hardware company Nothing launched a competitive product of its own, called Essential Voice. The core idea is similar to other dictation apps, as Essential Voice works in any app to turn your speech into formatted text, removing filler words like “um” and “ah” along the way. The company said that you can also create custom voice shortcuts for words, links, templates, and repeated phrases. For instance, you can assign the “my address” shortcut to your full address. At the moment, the feature is available on the Phone (3) with rollout for Phone (4a) Pro planned for later this month, and support for Phone (4a) arriving next month. The average person types 36 words a minute on a phone. But, they can say it four times faster.…