With Windows 10, Microsoft brings plethora of new changes in the hope to bounce back into the mobile market. One such big change is Microsoft apps/services support across other platforms. Earlier this year, the company had announced its plans to bring Cortana supportfor both Android and iOS.
Just ahead of the Windows 10 launch, the Cortana for Android app got leaked and was available for download. This isn’t an official launch, so users can expect some hiccups when it comes to the functionality of the digital assistant before it’s officially released.
Cortana on Android looks almost similar to the one on Windows 10, and gives alerts about weather, restaurants, traffic conditions and so on. “Transcription quality is decent, and will only improve as more people start using her,” says Ars technica.
“I downloaded it onto my Nexus 7 and was able to execute certain functions and commands. However I had difficulty with others. I was able to do some but not all types of searches. I successfully set calendar appointments, reminders and got driving directions. But I had surprising difficulty sending email, conducting local searches or getting answers to simple questions such as “how much is the Dollar worth vs. the Euro?, writes Searchengineland’s Greg Sterling.
“Everything in Cortana’s Notebook will show up across all your devices and any changes you make on one device will be reflected when you use Cortana on any of your other devices. The Cortana companion app will help you complete tasks you begin on your PC wherever you are, on your phone,” earlier stated a Windows blog post.
It isn’t yet a finished version, so the app is still reportedly incapable of reading emails. This means it can’t track packages either. Moreover, it is quite possible that Cortana may not have complete integration in Android, as seen in Windows. So the Android version may skip features such as Quiet Hour that lets you mute incoming calls and messages for a specified time period, Inner Circle that makes a list of exceptions during the Quiet Hours, and so on.
Microsoft’s Cortana has some good features, but it will have to bring in something out-of-the-box to impress Android users who are bound to opt for Google Now. There are also other competitors in the making such as Yahoo’s aviate. Wooing audiences across other platforms would be of great importance for Microsoft, and this would also mean paving way for bing searches.
Considering the latest report about Microsoft preparing Cortana for the Indian accent, it is quite possible that the digital assistant will make its way into the Indian market soon. In anupdate on the Windows Blog, Marcus Ash, Group Product Manager for Cortana at Microsoft wrote, “Today we’re announcing that over the coming months, Cortana will be available to customers in the Windows Insider Program in Japan and Australia, and in English in Canada and India.”
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