In tests the software worked well although like all speech recognition systems was prone to misidentifying certain words. This caused problems with the translation and the only solution was to try again -- sometimes with the result that the same error would be made. However on some occasions it got things right and not only recognized the question but successfully translated it.

"If I pay cash can you give me a discount?" was one of the sentences that it took in its stride.

Toshiba faced several challenges when developing the software. The demonstration was running on its TG01 smartphone that includes a relatively powerful 1GHz Qualcomm processor. The phone runs the Windows Mobile operating system and that imposes a 32MB limit on the size of each process running on the phone. However working within those restrictions the software was successfully pared down.

Work on the application at Toshiba's research department is almost complete after which it will be turned over to business units for commercialization. The Windows Mobile application could be modified to run on other operating systems, such as Android or Apple's iPhone OS, but future plans are yet to be decided.