Lack of Siri integration

smoledman

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I think this will severely limit sales as the Apple Watch will be the only wearable on the market that can fully integrate with Siri.
 

smurfalarm

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As of now, I'm not 100% certain it's even possible to integrate third party Bluetooth accessories with Siri the same way the Band integrates with Cortana unless they implement the handsfree profile, which the Band does not (and should not).
 

dorelse

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I think you're missing what they're trying to accomplish...Cortana integration on Apple & Android Products...load the Cortana App and integrate it with MS products. MS has already hinted at that...that Cortana would be available on all kinds of devices.
 

smoledman

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I think you're missing what they're trying to accomplish...Cortana integration on Apple & Android Products...load the Cortana App and integrate it with MS products. MS has already hinted at that...that Cortana would be available on all kinds of devices.

Cortana the App will never rival Siri or Google Now due to their deep OS integration. Cortana on Windows Phone will be awesome of course, but it comes with the poor app ecosystem baggage.
 

raycpl

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Just curious as to how many users actually use Cortana, Siri or Now. My guess its it'll be in the lower percentile. Hardly a factor. My two cents.
I haven't worn a watch in years nor do I use a fitness device.. Time to start. Hope the Band reaches here soon... just in time for Christmas... hopefully !!
 

TheZuneLune

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Cortana the App will never rival Siri or Google Now due to their deep OS integration. Cortana on Windows Phone will be awesome of course, but it comes with the poor app ecosystem baggage.
That is such a joke. Google Now can compete with Cortana because they have engineers working on it. They are very comparable, but geofencing and person-based reminders gives Cortana the edge right now. Apple bought Dragon to get Sri. They didn't develop the technology and don't have the know-how to take it to the next level. What was the latest big enhancement Siri received? If anything, Apple might buy the rights to use Cortana. They are already using Bing, which is a big part of powering Cortana. In no face to face challenge does Siri beat Cortana. All my iPhone friends laugh at Sri. As for the "poor app ecosystem baggage" - what a load of crap. It is the excuse used by Fanboys trying to make excuses for Apple's lack of hardware innovation,.

Just curious as to how many users actually use Cortana, Siri or Now. My guess its it'll be in the lower percentile. Hardly a factor. My two cents.
I haven't worn a watch in years nor do I use a fitness device.. Time to start. Hope the Band reaches here soon... just in time for Christmas... hopefully !!
I use Cortana daily, as does everyone in my immediate local circle - many of which are non-techies. You know how uses Cortana? Moms. They need help reminding them of things.
 

dorelse

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Just curious as to how many users actually use Cortana, Siri or Now. My guess its it'll be in the lower percentile. Hardly a factor. My two cents.
I haven't worn a watch in years nor do I use a fitness device.. Time to start. Hope the Band reaches here soon... just in time for Christmas... hopefully !!

I may be in the minority, but I use it all the time, typing a message has gotten to be a royal pain now.
 

link68759

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As of now, I'm not 100% certain it's even possible to integrate third party Bluetooth accessories with Siri the same way the Band integrates with Cortana unless they implement the handsfree profile, which the Band does not (and should not).



Why the hate for HFP? There's nothing wrong with it, and considering that any other audio profile would be effectively useless on a device like the band....
 

smurfalarm

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Why the hate for HFP? There's nothing wrong with it, and considering that any other audio profile would be effectively useless on a device like the band....

As a former Bluetooth developer, there is no hate for HFP from me. It's a great (if archaic and disorganized) profile. But unless there have been major changes to the HFP spec in the last couple years since I was actually actively working on Bluetooth developing, there are at least two good reasons why I think it's inadvisable to want a product like Band to implement HFP as a handsfree (HF):

1. The spec only allows one HF to be connected to your phone at a time. That means that if the Band connected to your phone as an HF, you couldn't use a carkit or an Bluetooth headphones at the same time.
2. If you make an outgoing call or signal for a voice command (eg siri, cortana, now), by default the connected HF will be the source for audio input and output. The Band has no speaker so it can't be used for phone calls, and even if it did, it isn't really a great form factor for having conversations, so it would be annoying to have to move the audio back to the phone from the Band every time you make a call. That would be a bad user experience.

I'm not sure which profile Microsoft is using for Cortana from Band. Bluetooth specs are always getting updated and new profiles are being created, and it has been a couple years since I was actively keeping on top of Bluetooth specs and white papers from the SIG, so it might be that there is some new profile or an update to the HFP spec that allows some sort of secondary HF-like voice command functions from a peripheral. But I'm not really aware of anything like that. My guess, and this is purely speculation, is that they might be implementing a proprietary protocol for transmitting the commands over an RFCOMM connection, and that this is handled by the Microsoft Health app. I could be completely wrong though.
 

link68759

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As a former Bluetooth developer, there is no hate for HFP from me. It's a great (if archaic and disorganized) profile. But unless there have been major changes to the HFP spec in the last couple years since I was actually actively working on Bluetooth developing, there are at least two good reasons why I think it's inadvisable to want a product like Band to implement HFP as a handsfree (HF):

1. The spec only allows one HF to be connected to your phone at a time. That means that if the Band connected to your phone as an HF, you couldn't use a carkit or an Bluetooth headphones at the same time.
2. If you make an outgoing call or signal for a voice command (eg siri, cortana, now), by default the connected HF will be the source for audio input and output. The Band has no speaker so it can't be used for phone calls, and even if it did, it isn't really a great form factor for having conversations, so it would be annoying to have to move the audio back to the phone from the Band every time you make a call. That would be a bad user experience.

I'm not sure which profile Microsoft is using for Cortana from Band. Bluetooth specs are always getting updated and new profiles are being created, and it has been a couple years since I was actively keeping on top of Bluetooth specs and white papers from the SIG, so it might be that there is some new profile or an update to the HFP spec that allows some sort of secondary HF-like voice command functions from a peripheral. But I'm not really aware of anything like that. My guess, and this is purely speculation, is that they might be implementing a proprietary protocol for transmitting the commands over an RFCOMM connection, and that this is handled by the Microsoft Health app. I could be completely wrong though.



Fair points, and I did not know the band didn't have a speaker.



However, the "only one connection at a time" has not been true for at least several years. Many mainstream devices support HSP and A2DP, and phones have connected to both profiles simultaneously since my oldest flip phone in 2004. Moreover it is perfectly possible for a phone to connect to one device via HSP and another via A2DP- so the MS band via HFP and a Bluetooth headset via A2DP.


Though the band HFP would have to be dropped for an incoming call, since the band MUST be connected by a data transferring profile it wouldn't be so crazy to have it automatically establish HFP for Siri when you press the button on the watch.

Not a perfect solution since I know some headsets are HFP only (I own one such bt earpiece) but in my experience that's actually rather rare.
 

smurfalarm

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However, the "only one connection at a time" has not been true for at least several years. Many mainstream devices support HSP and A2DP, and phones have connected to both profiles simultaneously since my oldest flip phone in 2004. Moreover it is perfectly possible for a phone to connect to one device via HSP and another via A2DP- so the MS band via HFP and a Bluetooth headset via A2DP.

To clarify, I meant that the HFP spec only allows for one handsfree at a time. That is, you couldn't have the Band and an earpiece both connected to the phone via HFP. A2DP is a separate consideration. You can listen to music with A2DP, but you cannot do any voice or telephony with it. So yes, you can listen to music on an earpiece via A2DP and activate Siri from the band via HFP, but that would preclude you from making phone calls and activating Siri from the ear piece while the Band is connected, and vice versa. (HSP and HFP are very closely related, so I am not really discussing them as separate profiles.)
 

link68759

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To clarify, I meant that the HFP spec only allows for one handsfree at a time. That is, you couldn't have the Band and an earpiece both connected to the phone via HFP. A2DP is a separate consideration. You can listen to music with A2DP, but you cannot do any voice or telephony with it. So yes, you can listen to music on an earpiece via A2DP and activate Siri from the band via HFP, but that would preclude you from making phone calls and activating Siri from the ear piece while the Band is connected, and vice versa. (HSP and HFP are very closely related, so I am not really discussing them as separate profiles.)


I recognize that and addressed it- the watch could establish HSP as needed, and as needed would only ever be when you try to activate Siri. The phone could reestablish HSP with the last connected device after.

But without a speaker on the watch itself, I agree that HSP would not be wise for it.
 

smurfalarm

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I recognize that and addressed it- the watch could establish HSP as needed, and as needed would only ever be when you try to activate Siri. The phone could reestablish HSP with the last connected device after.

But without a speaker on the watch itself, I agree that HSP would not be wise for it.

That doesn't really solve that you can't have two HF's connected simultaneously. If the phone was already connected to a Bluetooth headset or car stereo, then the Band wouldn't be able to connect to the phone via HFP, because the headset or stereo would already be connected to the phone via HFP and the phone only supports one HFP connection. That last point about the phone reestablishing HFP (not HSP, HSP does not support activating voice commands) with the "last connected device" is sort of beside the point, because the phone will never disconnect from the car stereo in the first place; it will just reject the Band's connection attempt, as required by the spec. That's a technical limitation that can't be overcome.

For what it's worth, if you want to activate Siri, transmit an audio voice command, and receive an audio response back, then you can already get that user experience by buying a set of headphones for $10, connecting them to your iPhone, and using the action button on your headphones to activate Siri.
 

link68759

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That doesn't really solve that you can't have two HF's connected simultaneously. If the phone was already connected to a Bluetooth headset or car stereo, then the Band wouldn't be able to connect to the phone via HFP, because the headset or stereo would already be connected to the phone via HFP and the phone only supports one HFP connection. That last point about the phone reestablishing HFP (not HSP, HSP does not support activating voice commands) with the "last connected device" is sort of beside the point, because the phone will never disconnect from the car stereo in the first place; it will just reject the Band's connection attempt, as required by the spec. That's a technical limitation that can't be overcome.

For what it's worth, if you want to activate Siri, transmit an audio voice command, and receive an audio response back, then you can already get that user experience by buying a set of headphones for $10, connecting them to your iPhone, and using the action button on your headphones to activate Siri.


The phone is perfectly capable of doing these things (disconnect hsp in favor of another device, reconnect) and the watch, which communicates with the phone by another profile is perfectly capable of telling the phone when to do this.
 

smurfalarm

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The phone is perfectly capable of doing these things (disconnect hsp in favor of another device, reconnect) and the watch, which communicates with the phone by another profile is perfectly capable of telling the phone when to do this.

Well, Apple would be perfectly capable of making iOS behave that way. But I am pretty certain iOS does not expose that level of connection management to third party applications, so that is not really an option for Microsoft as a third party app developer. Besides, sending a signal over an RFCOMM connection to a third party app which disconnects the existing HF, connects the phone to the Band over HFP, has the Band send the operating system an AT command to start voice command, waits for voice command to finish, disconnects Band from HFP, then reconnects to the most recent HF is unnecessarily complicated for activating a voice command. It would make more sense to implement this scenario by exposing an API for performing voice commands to third party apps so that you could do the whole thing over RFCOMM without involving HFP. I suspect that is how the Band integrates with Cortana on Windows Phone, though I have no way of telling for sure without access to a packet sniffer.
 

link68759

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Well, Apple would be perfectly capable of making iOS behave that way. But I am pretty certain iOS does not expose that level of connection management to third party applications, so that is not really an option for Microsoft as a third party app developer. Besides, sending a signal over an RFCOMM connection to a third party app which disconnects the existing HF, connects the phone to the Band over HFP, has the Band send the operating system an AT command to start voice command, waits for voice command to finish, disconnects Band from HFP, then reconnects to the most recent HF is unnecessarily complicated for activating a voice command. It would make more sense to implement this scenario by exposing an API for performing voice commands to third party apps so that you could do the whole thing over RFCOMM without involving HFP. I suspect that is how the Band integrates with Cortana on Windows Phone, though I have no way of telling for sure without access to a packet sniffer.



I agree it would be needlessly complicated and it probably wouldn't work fast enough in the first place. I made my initial statement under the assumption the watch had a speaker.



What you proposed does make sense until you consider that Apple creating a new API at the behest of Microsoft's desire to improve a direct competitor to Apple's own watch is significantly less likely than someone writing an app for a jailbroken iPhone that would juggle BT connections around.



:)

But without a speaker it's a moot point
 

Jackie CK

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Not only lack of Siri integration, the bluetooth connection of the Band will also destroy other bluetooth handsfree connection.

So, what is the choice of you? Disconnect the Band and store it into the drawer? Or don't use bluetooth handsfree again??

It's a real problem. If I know this problem, I will never buy the Band. Honestly. :crying:
 

aximtreo

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Cortana the App will never rival Siri or Google Now due to their deep OS integration. Cortana on Windows Phone will be awesome of course, but it comes with the poor app ecosystem baggage.

I'm so happy to find this out. I have many years of happy use with Window Mobile, WP 7, WP8 and now WP 8.1 and did not realize that I am using a poor ecosystem. Darn, learn something new everyday.
 

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