Cortana on Android?

[Chrisatpoly]

Dan,
I'm thinking about making the jump to Android, especially after last week's podcast and the comments you and Zac made. I'm hesitation, though, is on Cortana. I use it (her?) a lot to set reminders and text via Bluetooth. How similar/different is the experience on Android compared to Win10M? Can I still "call" Cortana and initiate a text or reminder?
Thanks so much
Christopher

 

[Mark Kaplan]

You will be sorely disappointing. She can't even read texts over Bluetooth. Hopefully MSFT will be adding more functionality but right now its nothing like the WM experience.

 

[jeffchapik]

This was the biggest reason I returned to WM.

 

[Mark Kaplan]

I may be back because of it. It's a key function I rely on,

 

[Richard Durishin]

Why is that so? Why, after all this time, don't text-to-speech/speech-to-text and the "Hey Cortana" function work in Android? I hear that "Hey Bixby" works for the Galaxy Note 8 so why not our favourite assistant?

 

[Awhispersecho]

None of them work the way Cortana does on WM. I just switched to a Note 8 a few weeks ago and Cortana has about half the capabilities as she does on WM. She can place calls but you have to physically activate her 1st. She does not announce or read texts to you like on WM either. Bixby will read a text message but you have to ask her to. So for instance, you have to know a text came in and then you say Hi Bixby, read me the last text message. Then she will read it. Google assistant is no better. The only difference is that Bixby and OK Google can be activated by voice, Cortana can't.

It amazes me that this amazing phone running what we have all been told for years is a superior OS, doesn't have 1 complete assistant on it. I have 3 assistants on a 1000 dollar high end phone running the leading mobile OS in the world and not 1 of them can do what Cortana does on a dead OS. It is the 1 thing I am having the hardest time adjusting to. I really hope MS adds full Cortana onto Android but I get the feeling that Google is the reason she is limited. I'm sure if it was up to MS, she would be just as capable on Android, after all, there are tons more potential users on that platform than they have even had on all the Windows platforms. I imagine, Google won't allow it.

 

[Adventurer64]

Yah, I just switched to Android ?????? and Cortana blows on Android. Miss W10M already.

 

[theefman]

Id bet its not Google's fault Cortana is crap on android, but the fault of the incompetent company that owns Cortana. Unless anyone has any actual proof beyond how they feel?

Sent from mTalk

 

[dov1978]

The fact is Cortana will never work as well on another OS like it does on Windows devices as it's not baked in. Google and Apple will let you have Cortana on their phones with a lot of functionality but it will never get the same integration as Google Assistant or Siri. That's the single most important issue. Android fares slightly better in that you can set Cortana or any other voice assistant as your default but even then it will never get full voice activation. One bonus for Android is that you can use apps like Tasker to instead trigger Cortana when you say OK Google. It's not perfect but it works. Maybe now that Microsoft is going all in with their apps on those platforms then Cortana may get some more of the same treatment and get some serious upgrades

 

[Mark Kaplan]

Well said