Cortana problems

[Sudhanvak]

Certain cortana commands not working on my Lumia 720, but they do work on my brother's 520.
Eg: Open music or open calculator or any such command opens the app on 520, but it always goes to Bing search on my 720. What am I missing?

 

[WorzelGummage]

Certain cortana commands not working on my Lumia 720, but they do work on my brother's 520.
Eg: Open music or open calculator or any such command opens the app on 520, but it always goes to Bing search on my 720. What am I missing?

Cortana is Beta and has proved to be very hit and miss with me. As such I have given up trying to use it for anything useful. Just like Siri, it's just another useless gimmick.

 

[TonyDedrick]

While I think a voice assistant is a gimmick in general, I actually find myself using Cortana outside of just amusing myself. She sets my alarms, adds events, calls my wife. I'm finding her very useful. Hoping they continue to improve her.

 

[WorzelGummage]

While I think a voice assistant is a gimmick in general, I actually find myself using Cortana outside of just amusing myself. She sets my alarms, adds events, calls my wife. I'm finding her very useful. Hoping they continue to improve her.

That's great, if you have the time and patience for it. I on the other hand do not so Cortana (in its current state) is useless and the same as the rest of the voice assistants on competing platforms. I've tried various assistants on Google and gave up very quickly. Cortana was given more attention but has still failed to impress or prove itself useful.

 

[TonyDedrick]

I'm not saying it or the idea of a voice assistant is perfect at all. And im sure the performance varies from device to device (which seems to be the case for most services or apps on a platform for whatever reasons). There's clearly room for growth. Just there hasn't been much to test my patience. I ask to set an alarm and she does it. I ask to add a birthday and she does it. She appears to get basic things like that right in one try. But again, I acknowledge that performance may vary for others for whatever reasons.

 

[AgnishB]

I have a 720 and am having no such problem.

 

[anon(8555314)]

Certain cortana commands not working on my Lumia 720, but they do work on my brother's 520.
Eg: Open music or open calculator or any such command opens the app on 520, but it always goes to Bing search on my 720. What am I missing?

did you do a hard reset after installing WP8.1?

 

[Sudhanvak]

The usefulness is still questionable for sure. Its just that if certain things are working on another phone and not working on one is irritating.

That's great, if you have the time and patience for it. I on the other hand do not so Cortana (in its current state) is useless and the same as the rest of the voice assistants on competing platforms. I've tried various assistants on Google and gave up very quickly. Cortana was given more attention but has still failed to impress or prove itself useful.

 

[Sudhanvak]

I have not tried hard reset after the installation. Will try that. Hopefully it resolves the issue. Thanks.

 

[WorzelGummage]

I have not tried hard reset after the installation. Will try that. Hopefully it resolves the issue. Thanks.

I didn't need to perform a hard reset after updating to 8.1 and installing Cortana. And I must admit that Cortana has been able to perform basic tasks for me with ease and without issue. My issue is that I'm not a major fan of voice assistants mostly because they aren't truly artificially intelligent (yet).

 

[AllanUSC]

I have a Nokia 1020 and I installed the WP 8.1 Preview as soon as it was available and I've noticed that Cortana seems to have difficulty hearing me. To answer a likely question, I do not speak softly. My normal speaking voice is loud enough that some people at work have complained that I speak too loudly.

When I start Cortana and tap the microphone icon I see the message "Listening..." but 90% of the time I can say anything and the phone does not respond at all.

About 10% of the time it seems to hear part of what I said. If I say "Where is France?" It will hear "France" and show me some information.

Initially I assumed there might be a problem with the mic but when I ran the microphone tests in the "Hardware Test" app, it seems to be working although I did notice that if I run the microphone test by counting 1 - 10, the phone sometimes doesn't register any sound until I get to "5,6,7..."

I am not aware of any microphone gain settings in WP 8/8.1 or on the phone itself. Is there anything I can try to fix this? Has anyone else experienced this problem?

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

A.

 

[cbreze]

I tried turning off Cortana from running in the background and found it saved noticible battery life. Problem is I forgot it was turned off and later asked Cortana to turn on quiet hours and she said she did, however it wasn't turned on since background running was off. Found out later when incoming email woke me up. So she didn't do what she said she did. Lesson learned for me. cortana's not foolproof and I'm learning to take her with a grain or two of salt. She also gives crappy directions at times. Hopefully she'll get better and evolve over time.

 

[Sudhanvak]

I did a hard reset. That has solved the problem. Still many small issues persist with cortana as discussed by all on this thread. Reduced battery life is a major concern. Thanks everyone for your replies.

 

[LKJ101]

After update my Lumia 525 to CORTANA it is not detecting the SIM.
Suggest me what should i do.
I don't think that it is a hardware problem, because it came just after i update my phone.

 

[cbreze]

After update my Lumia 525 to CORTANA it is not detecting the SIM.
Suggest me what should i do.
I don't think that it is a hardware problem, because it came just after i update my phone.

You could try disabling Cortana in battery usage settings. Hard/soft reset maybe. Take out sim and see if phone sees sim missing. Replace sim if the phone doesn't notice its removed. Might be 8.1 and not Cortana at all. I'd hard reset it. That can fix tons of stuff.

 

[techo phile]

I have lumia 520, I really like it and use it a lot , specially reminder, until yesterday "wake me up" or other orders about alarms was working well, but today I just get this error:
something's not right.try again in a little bit,(8000ffff);

can anyone help me please??

 

[WorzelGummage]

I have lumia 520, I really like it and use it a lot , specially reminder, until yesterday "wake me up" or other orders about alarms was working well, but today I just get this error:
something's not right.try again in a little bit,(8000ffff);

can anyone help me please??

It's most likely a server issue. Cortana requires an active Internet connection to function