Your UK Experience of Cortana

[Muessig]

So, If you're in the UK and you're on the Developer Preview it looks like you should have access to Cortana now. Use this thread to post your experiences (good and bad) of Cortana!

 

[anon(8763253)]

Re: Your UK Experience of Coitana

Its pretty bad it does a bing search for most stuff. It tells you the weather and does reminders and stuff but chit chat doesn't seem to work.

Posted via Windows Phone Central App

 

[Judas20]

Re: Your UK Experience of Coitana

'Sorry, I didn't catch that', is the only response I've been getting so far. Btw her voice sucks.

 

[MTorskyj]

Re: Your UK Experience of Coitana

It needs a lot of work! But for the simple things like texts and weather it isn't too bad for a beta. I mostly need Cortana for texting and phoning while on my bike and I think she'll be ok at that for now.

 

[asylumxl]

Re: Your UK Experience of Coitana

It's absolutely awful. It's pathetic when compared to the US version. Why they can't must change the accent but use the same content is beyond me.

 

[flattie]

Re: Your UK Experience of Coitana

So far, 'she' doesn't seem to have much personality; quirky questions inevitably result in a Bing search. That being said, these kinds of questions/responses are only the superficial aspect of the service; the main functionality appears to be good. I'm impressed with the voice recognition which does indeed seem to deal with implication and intent very well - perhaps even better than Google Now, which I find to be a very impressive service. I am also glad to finally have access to the quiet hours feature.

I'm still of an opinion that these tools will be at their most useful when they can be activated by voice for times when you're physically unable to handle your phone, or when it is unsafe to do so. While some people will no doubt be eager for MS to inject some 'personality' in to Cortana, I'm more interested in seeing a genuine hands free capability evolve, as it is starting to on Android.

Still, as a beta, it is a solid start and I look forward to seeing it progress.

 

[AndyFZ1S]

Re: Your UK Experience of Coitana

Indeed she lacks personality, ask her to play a song and she apparently likes to shuffle, Needs to be on par with US version for me to make use of it, US version will do for now as its quirky and fun to use.

 

[colinkiama]

People are reporting, as time passes, her personality gets better.

 

[stickyshocker]

People are reporting, as time passes, her personality gets better.

She sounds awful, even when she's on par with the U.S. version its not going to be the same ever! Microsoft all I can say is 99% of British people don't talk like your cortana for uk sorry.

 

[Muessig]

She seems to be doing everything I used to be able to get the US version of Cortana to do. She even seems to understand cockney rhyming slang a bit!

 

[mohammad rasool]

She's working correctly now. I guess they activated the servers, all jokes are go.

 

[Al_2]

It's great to have Cortana available and keep my phone set to the UK region but I'm quite disappointed in the voice. Some of it is recorded but it lacks life compared to Jen Taylor. And the robotic stuff is terrible, it's really slow and unnatural. I hope they bring an option to choose which voice you want.

 

[ruzzy83]

The voice is awful and will alienate most UK users, we don't have the posh sounding accents you Americans think we do.

She sounds as useless and robotic as siri, please bring back Jen and the halo selling point.

 

[DeeEmv1]

I've been using the US Cortana for a while now, so reverted my settings back to the UK to have a play around. Most of the functionality was there but that "British" accent is just awful and seems really robotic. Five minutes later and I've gone back to the US Cortana, I won't be reverting back either while that's the "Cortana" we have to use in the UK.

 

[markyjns]

The British voice is terrible just sounds like the really annoying call centre recordings press 1 for this, press 2 for that and no personality at all, no humour or playfulness. Will persevere for a few days but probably switch back to the US version.

 

[stickyshocker]

Could we start the let us choose feature and all vote for it?

 

[stickyshocker]

Here you go vote here
http://windowsphone.uservoice.com/f...-jen-taylor-available-for-all-english-regions

 

[Pete]

I don't think that Cortana has finished evolving yet. Some phrases have clear and distinct speech, but most others have the generic computer voice.

Marcus Ash has confirmed on twitter that the rollout hasn't completed yet. Hopefully things will be more complete by the morning.

 

[stickyshocker]

Did any of you play halo wars? The ai in there (Serena) had a nice voice for a British person, that's another voice I would like.

 

[Geddeeee]

Well it is terrible because all the features won't be 'turned on' until GDR1 is completely rolled out. It is the basic Cortana only.
If you search, there is a 'tweet' from Marcus Ashe explaining about this......