Want Siri on Your Android Phone? Try These Apps

Wouldn't you like to have your very ain gofer votive to doing all the lowly tasks you hate? That's a big split of the appeal of the iPhone 4S: Siri, the voice-driven virtual assistant, turns anyone with a brace hundred bucks into a CEO attended by a full-time lackey. But can you get the same sort of slavish devotion from an Humanoid phone?

I've played out the past calendar week auditioning all manner of Mechanical man virtual assistants, most of them free, including Google's Voice Actions app, the awkwardly named Speaktoit Assistant, and a digital "intern" named Eva that off-and-on my conversations to hector me nigh upcoming appointments.

I've concluded that you tooshie find in good order virtual help oneself happening an Android phone, but the assistants available likely won't be as smooth and capable as Siri. Siri is like the classic executive secretary, always well-dressed and possessed of an elephant's retention and a dry wit. Android assistants are more likely to present up with their shirttails hanging out now and again. They don't acknowledge how to do some things that Siri can practice, and they usually won't get your jokes. But that doesn't mean they aren't helpful.

More Than Voice Recognition

Galore people mean Siri and apps like it as organism mainly voice realization programs. Only while deciphering what you say is important, what differentiates virtual assistants is what they can do after rendition your speech. That's particularly true of Android virtual assistants because to the highest degree of them bank happening the OS's built-in voice recognition capability.

Both Apple and Google send what you order to their servers, whose powerful processors decipher your address and then send a textbook version back to your phone. Google's speech identification is uncannily hi-fi. I found it superior to Siri's (though in fairness, I didn't spend nearly as much time with Siri arsenic I did with my Android phone).

Thus virtual assistants differ from one another primarily in their ability to execute your commands after receiving them from the server. I put all of the helper apps I tested through a series of 18 tasks, from checking the weather and stock prices to sending an email subject matter, correspondence a location, and tweeting. My favorite assistants: Speaktoit Assistant and Google's Representative Actions.

Speaktoit Assistant

I spent a great deal of time last week talking to my phone and I found it strangely helpful that the free Speaktoit Assistant given me with an actual (albeit reanimated) person that I could talk to. You throne neuter your supporter's appearance in myriad ways, including changing his/her sex, hair way, and nose size. Female assistants can wear anything from a formal night-robe more appropriate for a red-carpeting event to a skimpy vest-and-tie combination that looks atomic number 3 though it belongs (temporarily) connected a stripper.

Speaktoit handled most of its assignments well, including checking the weather, making headphone calls, and answering questions (for instance, "How tall is the Empire State Construction?"). When I asked Speaktoit to lookup the Web or to find out a localisation on a represent, it brought the results up in a windowpane of its own, rather than opening my default web browser or mapping software. But you can touch down an icon in the corner of the windowpane to bring sprouted the same information in the default option apps.

I likable the app's approach to sending texts and email. It would transcribe my message and then set back information technology in the message field of my phone's default app. That arrangement leftish it to ME to manually choose the recipient, add u a guinea pig (in the case of an email), and press Ship. Though the come near isn't as hands-free every bit the way Siri handles the same tasks, it's brag to how many other Android assistants bash it. Speaktoit as wel successfully tweeted and posted condition updates to Facebook, which Siri can't do without a workaround.

Speaktoit was one of the few Android assistants I time-tested that could lick how to play medicine from my collection, with this limit: Whether I asked it to play an record album surgery an artist, it played just one song from the album or artist, a selection that it seemingly chose at random. Another idiosyncrasy: Speaktoit can tell you your agenda for today, but not for any other day.

Google Vox Actions

Most virtual assistants claim that they can figure out what you want regardless of how (reasonably) you word your requests. Google's rid of Voice Actions help–take off of its Representative Look utility–demands a more consistent approach. To use this app, you must employ Google's set phrases. To play music, for example, you have got to say "Listen in to Sesamum indicum Howard Carter" preferably than "Play Benny Carter." Google's app is somewhat more limited in what it can do, too: In addition to playing music, it hindquarters send texts and email, make calls, map a location, give directions, write a note, search the Web, and go to a specific site.

If you play away Google's rules, though, you'll find that the app is smooth and helpful. Perhaps because Voice Actions is a Google-developed app interacting with a Google-developed operating organization and (in many cases) with other Google-matured apps such as Maps, the whole organisation workings middling seamlessly.

For a number of tasks, however, Voice Actions wasn't quite equally custody-free as I might have wished from a virtual assistant. When I asked for the sidereal day's upwind, for illustrate, instead of reading me the day's presage–atomic number 3 Speaktoit Subordinate did–Voice Actions searched the Web for a endure report that I had to record off my screen; this placement ISN't a problem if you'ray walking on the street, just it's definitely inconvenient if you'Re driving.

Vlingo

Vlingo is one of the some Mechanical man assistants that doesn't trust exclusively on Google's vocalize recognition system. You can opt to use Google's system or Vlingo's home-grown processing. My advice is to stick with Google. I well-tried Vlingo's voice recognition and found it by and large disappointing.

In fact, I was discomfited aside this free app overall. It couldn't do a add up of functions–such every bit reading me my calendar or setting an alarm–at all. Even odder were capabilities that it had one solar day and seemed to lose the next. The first time I tested Vlingo, for instance, it did a competent job of preparing an email message. But the next time I asked it to "institutionalize an email," it simply offered to Google the phrase "commit an email."

Vlingo does have few bright spots. Information technology can send tweets and update your Facebook position. Also, when you give Vlingo a instruction, it continues listening to you until you press Done. Many early systems stop hearing as soon as they detect a pause, forcingyoutospeakreallyfastsothattheydon'tcutoffbeforeyou'redone.

Next: Jeannie and Eva Intern

Jeannie

Up until about a week ago, this app was named Voice Actions, just the like the Google app. To end the confusion, the third-party developer, Pannous, changed the name of its app to Jeannie (it still shows dormy on my call A Voice Actions, however, even though I've updated the app). Jeannie is free. Alternatively you can purchase a $3 Voice Actions Addition app with the like capabilities. Pannous says that the Plus variation of the app should work on your actor's line more quickly.

Unfortunately, signing up Jeannie A your own supporter is a bit same hiring a slacker with a poor work value orientation. When I asked Jeannie to send a text, e.g., it asked for the recipient's epithet, then again conscionable switched Maine to my texting app, without starting the text or adding the name of the recipient. (Jeannie can be a bit passive-aggressive, as well. It asked whether I wanted to leave information technology to go to my texting app. When I said "Okay," it responded "Okay by Pine Tree State, too." Ouch.)

Other things Jeannie did were equitable mysterious. IT put back an alarm when I asked it to, and the alarm went off right happening docket, but I couldn't figure out how to turn it off because Jeannie hadn't set IT victimization Android's intrinsical alarm system. When I asked Jeannie to take a short letter, it started recording me–but never showed Maine what it had transcribed. Instead, it simply said "Done," and then told me I could send the note away email "after." It wasn't clear to ME how.

Unity of my tasks up to her neck asking each of the personal assistants to get me Apple's fund price. Many of them fell short in several ways–giving ME a general market story, for instance. But Jeannie's response was the all but surreal: IT searched the Web for images of apples and presented those to me.

Eva Intern

Eva is ilk a task applicant World Health Organization seems reverberant in the interview, but WHO you wind up nonexistent to strangle aft a couple days of frustrating collaboration.

Eva is represented by a photo of a brunette who is attractive but (to my eyes in any case) has an underlying air of jejuneness. A companion app called Evan gives you the option of ordering a guy around, if you prefer; he looks similar a model from the concealment of a chat up refreshing. The list of things that Eva/Evan can theoretically do is impressively long: Bulletproof, which designed the app, says that IT can create expense reports and daybook entries, start applications, military post to Facebook, realise playlists, and supervise contact groups. (Eva Intern is free only for the first 28 days, by the way; after that, you have to pay $9 for the laden version.)

Unfortunately, Eva came across as some so dense and so afraid of making a misunderstanding that it couldn't get a lot done. When I asked the app for Microsoft's sprout price, it catalogued three viable interpretations: "give me microsoft stock price," "give me a microsoft hackneyed Price," and "giv me microsoft stock price."

You might imagine that any one of those would represent close enough for an thinking supporter to shape outgoing. But Eva's reaction was "I'm sorry, I heard what you said but I don't recognise how to interpret it. Please try once more."

Eva also had the annoying wont of popping up unsummoned–even when my sound was asleep–to read calendar entries to me. "Hi Erectile dysfunction, I'm reminding you about conference call with Stacey in CR-500 at 5 p.m." Even more galling was that the app insisted on reading for each one calendar entranceway three times. Eva's instructions said that the virtual low-level would be restrained if I asked it to, simply the ensuing peace lasted only until my next appointment, when Eva would again implore me three multiplication not to lack the impending meeting. There may be another manner to induce Eva to clam up, but I never found it. The app's book of instructions are the longest and wordiest of some mobile app I've seen; and after plowing through them for a while in hopes of solving an fast job, I commonly lost solitaire with trying to use them.

Ultimately, I wrote a calendar entry reminding me to uninstall Eva as soon as I'm done with this story. That may cost the only time I'll be glad to hear this virtual assistant's vocalise.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/478034/want_siri_on_your_android_phone_try_these_apps.html

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