I think the idea is they are making voice confirmation part of the voice dial menu.  I noticed that depending on what I have running and stuff I can use my headset to initiate the voice dialing.  There are no voice prompts and it doesn't do a great job with understanding what you said (think about how wonderful Google Voice is at transcribing voicemails it uses the same software) so you basically just have to assume it did it and tell it to call but then it doesn't understand so it pops up a little menu with different selections for what you meant.  So yeah it is by no means a handsfree device currently.  Supposedly in Froyo voice prompts and confirmations have been built into that system so that it will be a little better.  Possibly even work well with Blue tooth and corded headsets as well.

I don't think I would expect it to be just outstanding until Spring of next year when 3.0 is coming out.  I am assuming that will be Horchatta just because that is what I would want it to be.  Gingerbread (an assumption as far as I know at this point) is probably going to be 2.6 or 2.5 something like that.  I would think expect that late fall to early winter with most of us getting it Early next year.  Hopefully as they separate various things out from the core updates will take a little less time to roll out.  That is the plan from what I have heard but who knows.  My guess is November or so we will see phones on the Cortex A9 processing Core probably an early iteration of it coming out most likely with a single core, and also possibly a Moorestown Intel Atom based phone or two.  These will more than likely require a new version of Android if for no other reason but to build in support for the new processors.  Likely the reason for 2.0 on the Droid being the first Cortex A8 processor on Android.  Something similar will probably happen for whatever those are which will be like 2.0 kind of a minor half update that required several intermediary updates and at least one major update to be the full 2.1 it was intended to be.  2.0 was rushed out probably just to support the new hardware profiles, then 2.1 came out to finish the job.  If we are lucky 2.2 will include support for these two new processor platforms and we won't even have to wait until December for those phones.  Though I wouldn't expect a whole lot more in the way of major Android phone releases on Verizon besides what is already announced until the big Autumn push to Christmas.