Hey cortana!!! will you come to low end/midrange phones?

Joshwin

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Its really awesome to use cortana and the entire phone without even touching the phone. I would really love to have it on all the windows phones at least on phones with SD400 and above(640/640xl) because of the fact that these phones will have higher market share. I understand that it is supported only on devices with SensorCore and the Snapdragon 80x chipset right now, but is it possible that "Hey cortana" feature would be optimized for low/mid range phones as well in the future? if it is not possible what are the technical difficulties for WP?(I mean why only WP needs SD 80x for this feature while android phones (ok google now) works perfectly even on SD S4?)thank you
 
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ttsoldier

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This feature is dependant on the SensorCore and Snapdragon 80X as you said....

The only way I can see this happening is when much newer processors are released and the 80X is considered to be low/midrange....

Other than that .. No.
 

Joshwin

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I don't think SD 80x is the minimum hardware requirement for a phone to have passive listening, cos then how can moto x(2013) with SD s4 pro have passive listening feature? if moto x can have this feature why wp with similar hardware can't? may be current "always-listening"feature is optimized to work only on that particular hardware. But sure can be optimized to work on SD s4 as well. so I think it is more of a software limitation rather than hardware don't you think?
 
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realwarder

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Moto X has a dedicated chip to listen for commands when the phone is in standby. In Nokia phones the 80x+ processor hardware is used to do the same thing.

As mentioned, over the next couple of years the cheaper phones will use more powerful processors and then gain features like this. In the meantime only high end Windows phones will have this.
 

heickelrrx

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In theory that's possible. I had encounter a bug on Lumia 625 in 10 tech preview 2nd build. It has the feature on setting and work. But it drain battery like hell. I have to recharge every 2 hours while in 8.1 can last a day
 

a5cent

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Hey Joshwin

The two posts above basically explained it.

Always-on listening requires dedicated hardware support, so as to be able to have the entire phone powered down and in standby, except for the specially deigned low-power circuitry that continuously does ambient noise analysis and frequency pattern matching.

This can be done without dedicated hardware, but that means the device can never go into standby mode, as the main CPU and DSP are constantly analysing ambient noise. The result is the same as if you'd never turn off your device... very heavy batter drain. So while that's possible, it isn't an acceptable solution. As a result, some have suggested that non SD 80x devices support always-on listening only when the device is plugged in. While that is possible, it's a pain in the a55 from an engineering perspective (improving and maintaining the same logic twice is costly and prone to bugs).

As previously mentioned, the Moto X comes with a dedicated chip specifically for this task, meaning the SD S4 actually can't do that. Nor can any SD 400.

I provided a small write-up that describes what SensorCore is and how it relates to always-on listening. If you're interested in getting more details you can find that here:

http://forums.windowscentral.com/wi...5-what-exactly-sensorcore-answers-inside.html
 
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Joshwin

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In theory that's possible. I had encounter a bug on Lumia 625 in 10 tech preview 2nd build. It has the feature on setting and work. But it drain battery like hell. I have to recharge every 2 hours while in 8.1 can last a day

Thats interesting. You should have probably made a video demo of it. I don't care about the battery cos I would turn this feature only when I am at home.
 

Joshwin

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Thank you, that explains it. I wish at least they had put a dedicated chip like in moto x for all the midrange phones(830,730,640 and 640xl etc) that lacks SD 80x. cos cortana being WP's forte it should function full featured at least on all mid-range phones if not on low end devices. Hope they do that with 740.
 

a5cent

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Thank you, that explains it. I wish at least they had put a dedicated chip like in moto x for all the midrange phones(830,730,640 and 640xl etc) that lacks SD 80x. cos cortana being WP's forte it should function full featured at least on all mid-range phones if not on low end devices. Hope they do that with 740.

Qualcomm's entire sensor hub, including the low-power DSP, will eventually be integrated into newer mid-range and finally even to low-end SoCs. At that point WP devices using those SoCs will get that feature for free, i.e. without requiring any additional engineering efforts from MS (which integrating an external chip would). It's just a matter of time...
 
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Joshwin

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I have had this doubt for long time now, I was hopping that they will bring this feature to all devices with some software updates. but I wasn't too sure. Now my doubts are cleared. I use cortana a lot so it will be nice to have hey cortana feature on my phone. I was about to buy lumia 640xl thinking that in the future it will support hey cortana. I love everything about 640xl, and the price is just right for me .but really its a catch-22 situation cos I dont want to spend a lot of money and buy 930/1520 just to get that feature. I think now I have to wait till they bring out a midrange device that supports hey cortana.
 

heickelrrx

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Yes. She was answering all trivia thing but when you say "Hey cortana start xxx" she won't listen again till reboot. And you can't use her manually till reboot

I'm guessing she was stuck on listen mode the whole time. It's technically possible with any chip but snapdragon 800 has done it with different way. That's way they applied it to 930.

It's not like other devices isn't capable doing so. But there isn't any known way to applied such feature on non SD800 Lumias without sacrificing performance, and battery life.

If you can find any other modded version of OS maybe you could do it. Well I doubt there are any
 

Joshwin

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I love to use cortana handfree most of the time especially using a bluetooth headset. i hope to see bluetooth headsets with dedicated cortana button to activate cortana, so that even phones without "Hey cortana" can activate cortana just using their bluetooth headsets and can interact with the phone. Microsoft band has a button to activate cortana but we cant listen to cortana using that. But i am not sure if it is possible to activate cortana using a bluetooth headset.
Cortana bluetooth earphone.jpg
 

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