[Jazmac]

The Verge and other blogs are publishing the upcoming 8.1 update and the goodies it ts to bring to Windows Phone. Among those are notification center and a personal assistant. No doubt the notification center will be good but what about the personal assistant? Suppose it doesn't measure up to what it is being compared to aka Siri? Would that make it a fail if it doesn't measure up to Siri? And what will the metrics be? What are yours?

[Jessica Lares]

I think the current assistant in Windows Phone is already a little superior to Siri. The fact that it has the app integration is my favorite part. I liked Siri in the beginning, but they started taking away some of the qualities that made her more natural.

Like when you would ask her about the weather, she'd go, "Nice weather coming up... Information." Now she's like, "OK, here's the weather for today," in iOS 7. She has more use, but I enjoy using her less and less everyday. She's not as quirky anymore. I really dislike the new voice too.

So I think Microsoft has a good chance of making a really good product if they add to what they already have.

[jmshub]

I don't think that the digital assistant is the key to 8.1, but it should hopefully be good. It's funny that Siri is the yardstick by which talking to your phone is measured. I have seen more amusing Siri fails at the hands of my iphone coworkers than successes. I think Google is leading this by a mile with their voice recognition stuff.

Hopefully any voice activation stuff on Windows Phone can on par with Google's stuff.

[Jazmac]

I don't think that the digital assistant is the key to 8.1, but it should hopefully be good. It's funny that Siri is the yardstick by which talking to your phone is measured. I have seen more amusing Siri fails at the hands of my iphone coworkers than successes. I think Google is leading this by a mile with their voice recognition stuff.

Hopefully any voice activation stuff on Windows Phone can on par with Google's stuff.

I'm not a fan of google but in voice recognition, oh yeah, they rule it. I'm hoping MS developers can produce natural speaking in the way google has. I already think MS has a winner with its current voice recognition. I remember when it first it and how much a joke it was. Its really speedy now and pretty accurate.

[Laura Knotek]

I don't use any voice recognition at all, and it does not appeal to me at all. I don't even like talking on a phone, so I have no desire to talk to a phone.

[Guzzler3]

The voice recognition feature that I like and use the most on WP, is dictating a SMS message when I'm driving. I connect my phone to my car stereo via the headphone jack, and when a text msg comes in, the phone will mute the music, and say "Message from (insert contact name), do you want me to read it or ignore?' I usually have it read me the message over the car speakers, then I reply to it, have the phone read it back what I said to me, to proof the message, then send it. When it's done, it un-mutes the music it's playing, I never take my eyes off the road. This alone is well worth it.

[Jazmac]

I don't use any voice recognition at all, and it does not appeal to me at all. I don't even like talking on a phone, so I have no desire to talk to a phone.

Noted. When I think in terms of "talking to a phone", there are some situations where having it as an option simply works. Especially when it comes to the concept of "mobile". For instance, I am big on health foods. Many I find out about I can't spell worth a lick. I can pronounce them though. That is where voice comes in handy. Comes in handy when I'm driving and I get a text message. My phone plays back through my car stereo via Bluetooth. I get the option for the text to be read and I can respond to a text without touching the phone. That happens and it works well on my L920 in the mobile space. Other examples but these I think make the point.

Now I'm with you Laura if you are talking about having a one-on-one with phone. One of those talking is a pure lonely and needs friends badly. lol.

[JPDVM2014]

I agree with jmshub, I would much rather have something that is more like Google Now than Siri.

[jrdatrackstar1223]

This feature, better hardware (GPUs in particular for gaming), and NFC payments are all I need for my Windows Phone experience to be "perfect". I have a lot riding on this feature, and if it fails to deliver then I will seriously consider a Nexus because Microsoft has had PLENTY of time to get all this stuff right THIS TIME. No more can they use these "didn't have time" and "need more of this..." type of excuses. They seriously oversold Windows Phone 8 when it first released with a lot of promises, and 2013 has gone and nothing has really happened (minus new apps finally coming, which is a separate issue). The way Microsoft drags its feet with things like this has really annoyed me, so when they do announce stuff like this and it's a bust, I just get fed up with them.

I really hope this virtual assistant isn't lipstick on a pig, with simply more features added to TellMe (though, even THAT would be nice). We need natural language support and to be able to just USE IT without having to remember commands or specific things. When Windows Phone 8 first released, they made the new TellMe API sound nice, where developers could extend commands to their app. However, it's so useless when I have to REMEMBER what the command is for the app in the first place; it'd be quicker and more natural for me to just open the app instead of having to remember the EXACT command. It gets even worse when you have a BUNCH of apps with voice commands, and each app may have a TON of voice commands. Who is going to sit around and memorize all those voice commands.

Microsoft needs to put in the work with urgency that they simply can't keep "waiting" for the next big thing they create and then release it 3 years after everyone has moved on from their platform. They need to release stuff to at least keep up with competition, then worry about blowing them away with new features to add later. Windows Phone itself is already unique, so there is no need to delay things like a personal assistant on the basis of "wanting to wait until we can deliver something so different that it's worth the wait".

[etphoto]

The voice recognition feature that I like and use the most on WP, is dictating a SMS message when I'm driving. I connect my phone to my car stereo via the headphone jack, and when a text msg comes in, the phone will mute the music, and say "Message from (insert contact name), do you want me to read it or ignore?' I usually have it read me the message over the car speakers, then I reply to it, have the phone read it back what I said to me, to proof the message, then send it. When it's done, it un-mutes the music it's playing, I never take my eyes off the road. This alone is well worth it.

Unless they are one or two word sms messages my phone never got the dictation right. It caused to much frustration for me so I went back to typing. Dictating in the car was much worse.

[anon(123856)]

I'm with Laura on this one... I really don't want to talk to electronic devices. I have voice commands in my car and never use it all. It takes less time to push a button. To answer the OPs original question, I certainly won't consider it a fail. But as I stated, I'll never use it no matter how "good" it is.

[Brad Pedersen]

Microsoft already has the software to have a feature that competes with Siri and S-Voice, but they're not releasing it until there's something about it that surpasses the current voice integration technology. They've realized that they can't just keep up with technology, they have to be able to blow it out of the water.

[Jazmac]

Unless they are one or two word sms messages my phone never got the dictation right. It caused to much frustration for me so I went back to typing. Dictating in the car was much worse.

Have you used it lately? It was pure garbage when it dropped with this longish wait to get a response. Now its almost instantaneous and for me its been about 90+% accurate.

[Moiz Mian]

I too prefer Google Now to Siri. Of course the speech recognition is unbeatable in the market, but I also am a big fan of the cards. For example, it uses pre-defined context to show you your weather, your commute time, your flights, your sports team scores/when they're playing. From what I've read about Cortana, it's supposed to be heavily context driven as well, so I hope it features similar features if not more than Google Now. Unfortunately, I haven't seen anything from Microsoft to suggest that they can even achieve this. Smart Bing Search is nowhere near as comprehensive as Google, and voice recognition on Xbox One (which is one of it's biggest and most significant features) has a very rigid set of vocabulary and is not nearly as good as Google Now's speech recognition.

But again, I'm hopeful that Microsoft is hiding some kind of alien technology that they will release in WP8.1 :D

[Guzzler3]

Unless they are one or two word sms messages my phone never got the dictation right. It caused to much frustration for me so I went back to typing. Dictating in the car was much worse.

I have speech impediment (stuttering), I am amazed at how well it works for me. Granted, it does screw up trying to figure out what I said, and sometimes it takes me 2 or 3 attempts for me to dictate a message.

But I usually get it done (I might have to stop and think of a synonymous word that I can pronounce without stuttering). I'm used to having to repeat myself because of my stuttering. My stuttering has gotten better compared to when I was a kid (Porky Pig was as eloquent as J.F.K compared to me as a kid), thank goodness they didn't have speech recognition back then.

But it's still a heck of a lot safer than trying to type while driving, or sitting at a traffic light.

[tk-093]

I don't use any voice recognition at all, and it does not appeal to me at all. I don't even like talking on a phone, so I have no desire to talk to a phone.

Your phone does all kinds of awesome and cool things for you, the least you could do is talk to it every so often!


I actually used to be like that, but using Google Now and their awesome voice recognition has changed that. Their voice to text is seriously the #1 thing I want on a Window's Phone. It's dang near instant and almost alwasy flawless. I use it all the time to dictate text messags and emails.

The way it does punctuation is what makes it so easy to dictate lines and lines of text. I can say, "What are you doing today question mark if you're not busy let's go eat some chicken wings comma or maybe drink some beer exclamation point" and it translates it to "What are you doing today? If you're not busy let's go eat some chicken wings, or maybe drink some beer!"

That's what I need on my WP.