Halo’s Cortana: Siri’s Nemesis?

It’s not that Siri is all that brilliant. She could be hilarious with her responses, sure, but there is still a lot of room for improvement. Ask Apple users just how often they use Siri, or even if they even rely heavily on Apple’s built-in personal assistant.

There is, however, much to be said about how advanced Siri is when compared to Microsoft’s digital assistant on Windows Phone 8. It does exist, and it is voice activated; but it practically is useless.

I say practically because it can recognise a handful of voice commands: Call, Open, Text, Find, and Note – but that’s about it. So much for having a personal digital assistant on your phone, yeah?

So I suppose, at this point, Siri rules.

But is that about to end if Cortana makes it as Microsoft’s default personal assistant on its devices?

Halo players will recognise the AI voice inside Master Chief’s head in the game, and believe it or not, she might be the one to give Siri a run for her money; and she’s going to be included in the latest Windows Phone 8.1 update.

If you’re expecting a sexy human-looking interface for Cortana, though, you’ll be disappointed. The physical representation for Cortana will be an animated icon, circular in shape, and will match the preferred colour scheme of  the user.

How can Cortana match Siri? It supposedly can be launched using a dedicated hardware key. It will replace Bing search, and then, combine key features of Siri AND Google Now.

Should Apple and Google be shaking in their boots now?

Here’s a chart comparing the three services.

From the looks of it, the game is still far from over. There are plusses and minuses for each digital personal assistant, but the addition of a third player certainly makes things more interesting for users – more choices, more competition. That means the makers are going to up their game, which will only benefit us!

Do you think Cortana can make it?

[Images via YouTube & The Motley Fool]