Voice control showdown: Siri vs Google Now, S Voice, BlackBerry and Windows Phone 8
Summary: Smartphone makers are looking to voice control and personal assistants to make their hardware stand-out. But are all voice control systems created equally?
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While Android has included voice commands for some time, the most recent version – Jelly Bean – also has Google Now, which isn't quite the same thing as Siri or S-Voice as it's based around Search and other Google services. Nor is it the same as the other stock Android Voice commands system that focuses more on hardware control. That's not to say Now can't be used for handset control functions too, although it is a little more limited in this department than some of its competitors.
For example, while you can say "where is the nearest Nandos?" (it gave the best answer of the bunch, pictured above) or "navigate to nearest petrol station" and it will do what you ask, you can't carry out system functions such as turning Wi-Fi on or off. I could only seem able to open certain Google-made apps through Now. Given the integration with things like Google Maps, telling it to take me to London Bridge automatically popped open Google Navigation with a route all loaded.
The level of voice recognition and understanding of Google Now was very impressive, with it easily understanding individual words (particularly ones that are easy to misinterpret) or slightly vague questions, such as will I need a coat tomorrow, which it answered with ease. Google Now's voice recognition was easily the best overall at understanding what is being said.
Google Now, is in some ways limited by its lack of ability to perform some system functions, but it can do things like open third-party apps that you've installed on the phone.
Open Now and ask it to send an email, call or text one of your contacts and it will have no problem understanding the words, but bizarrely – in my testing at least – word recognition when asking it to add one number to another was atrocious; it simply couldn't understand the word 'add' or 'sum'.
If I told it divide, multiply or work out the square root it got there first time, though.
Strangely, while newer Android phones have Now and the older Voice Control both apps are accessed separately.
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Talkback
Assumptions...
Fine
You mean those adds that make
Siri and iPhone/iPad are just toys for ....
If an iPhone can simultaneously control 32 different external devices running each a different application with 1 ms precision, and still allow me to use the device as a smartphone, then we are cool. Android can't do that off the shelf, but I have modified it to so for my personal use. Can't do that with an iPhone.
Until I will only consider it as a toy for shallow people that don't know any better.
I've heard of it because of ZDnet!
Seen or heard of it - nope.
Your or An
I have an iphone 4
Then apple bought the company called Siri and suddenly the app was gone.
Then apple needed a bullet point feature spec list sheet item to sell the 4s because it wasn't actually better than the iphone 4 in any way.
So siri came back as an iphone 4s exclusive because apple told me that the iphone 4 wasn't powerful enough to run siri. Refer to the first sentence in my post to see apple's lie.
Apple Lie
then why did they pull it? (nt)
Worked better
correctly put.
I think such comparisons shall bring in pertinent points like what all categories an app is capable to attend of... like... due to ongoing dispute with the level of integration of voice assistants, some functionality differences are inherent among apps... that should be highlighted first... before comparison... In fact, compare them on differences, then come about what similar they can do.... and who well in compared to each other...
I may appear a little vague over here.... but a person with deep understanding about the task at hand ... will understand ... so is the work and duty of a blogger/reporter... to present it in an objective way so that it generates genuine interest rather than getting a feeling that we wasted time to listen to a fan boy...
What... are you... talking... about...
He's.... using....
Windows Phone
You should post your test
Here is what I like, and don't like, about WP8 voice
With WP8, when a text comes in, my phone asks me if I want it read to me. I don't have to press anything, never have to take my eyes off the road or my hands off the wheel. After the text has been read, WP8 asks me if I want to respond. Again, no button pressing. If I answer yes, I can dictate a message and send it. The entire conversation is very natural and at no point do I look at the screen or press a button or tap a screen of any kind.
If the other platforms do that as well, kudos. My iphone 4 certainly could not do that.
What I don't like: dictation is lacking some much needed control. While it handles English extremely well, there is no way of correcting a single word or spelling out a proper noun. So everything up to and after dictation is fantastic on WP8. Dictation can be extremely frustrating if any mistakes are made. Your only 2 choices are to try again or just hope that the person on the other end can sound it out and figure it out.
Also, failed to play to its strengths
I don't believe any of the other OSes can do those things.
So, WP is (as usual) unique in it's approach. In some ways, much much better, and in other ways severely lacking...like the OS itself.
And I cannot compare to Android, but I will contest that WP's voice recognition is much more accurate than Siri. I would bet Android's is better still, since Google have been doing this stuff for a long time.
Yes, this could be a strong feature
So I've played around with it to control music but not often. What would be great is if I could use voice to control a navigation app without once having to look at or tap the screen. I haven't found a fully voice controlled navigation app though. Do you know of one?
Re: Strong Feature...