The growth of the smartphone has shown several key points about the mobile market in general, including that the mobile market clearly loves having the option to make and receive calls just about anywhere said market happens to be at the time. But as anyone who's tried to make or receive a call in a public place knows from experience, it's not always the best voice quality coming through. There can be plenty of background noise in the mix throwing off the quality of that transmission. But Cypher, meanwhile, is offering up a new kind of voice isolating software that may be just what was needed to make calls clear and crisp regardless of conditions on the ground.

While smartphones have been rapidly gaining capabilities over the years since the introduction of said devices onto the wider stage, the actual phone part of a smartphone hasn't been gaining all that much ground. Speakers and microphones shrink, chips and cameras are modified, and that ultimately leaves us with devices that offer a host of functions yet “...still suck(s)...”--as Consumer Reports noted back in May, reportedly—when it comes to making calls. That's where Cypher comes into play.

Cypher has been hard at work making software that can identify and isolate a person's voice, which actually is sufficiently successful to cut background noise fully 99 percent. With 99 percent of background noise gone, that improves call quality substantially, and makes it possible for calls to go on in places where, previously, it would be next to impossible to hear the caller.

Cypher reportedly requires no special hardware to operate, being somewhat unique in the marketplace by dint of its ability to provide its services just on the strength of its code. Cypher software, meanwhile, is backed up by pattern-recognition algorithms that look for certain basic elements of human speech and respond to these elements accordingly. Reports suggest the company is already at work talking to chipmakers, device makers and even phone carriers to get a market for the software, and word about customers is expected to arrive in the next few months. The company is also said to be looking for fundraising opportunities as well, with $2.5 million in seed funding already under its collective belt.

But it's not just for the sake of better calls in crowded places; some have even suggested that this technology could be just what digital assistants need to become more efficient. When Apple's Siri or Microsoft (News - Alert)'s Cortana can easily pick out what's being said, such assistants are in turn more likely to better react to what's being said. The company also projects being able to provide service to first responders, with one demonstration conclusively editing out the background noise—background noise was gunfire—that the party viewing the demonstration actually asked for some of the background noise back to better establish context. Further, imagine what such technology could do for accuracy rates for speech-to-text converters like Dragon Naturally Speaking; if the program can more readily identify what's being said, it can in turn more readily convert it to text.

The question here will be just how well Cypher's software actually works for users. If it can work as advertised, then it might well be just what some users were waiting for, and may well improve some device sales that put it to work. It will be interesting to see just what this does when it hits the market, and hopefully, that day won't be far off.