Best Personal Assistant: Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa or Cortana

Posted on March 22nd, 2017 by Quertime Writer in Mobile

If you have a job that requires a lot of driving, having a good personal assistant on your phone is really important so that you can manage your work, personal, and social life (as well as your music playlists) without risking the quality of your driving.

Whether you are a truck driver, a taxi driver, a courier, or just someone that has to travel a lot for business, having the right set of apps, as well as a first-class voice recognised personal assistant on your phone is key to a smooth journey and making sure your eyes stay where they should be- on the road.

At present you can pick from weather apps, voice messaging apps, navigation and sat nav apps, and with another trucking mobile app launched, the selection of road friendly applications continues to grow.

But with several choices out there, from the infamous Siri, to the lesser known Alexa and Cortana, which one should you go for? Luckily for you we have had a quick roundup of all the key players in the game, and have given you a run-down of the perks, quirks, and everything in between.

Siri

Let us start with the most well-known of the bunch. Siri was released in October 2011 on iOS and was an instant success. A voice activated and controlled natural language interface programme, it adapts to the users’ voice, accent, and tone as well as having a ‘memory’ which allows it to develop and personalise its responses to the particular individual. Whilst on the whole, it is a fantastic and functional app that not only allows users to make appointments, place calls, send emails and sms, and navigate, there are some flaws. There have been several complaints and many amusing internet posts that highlight the limits of Siri’s understanding of voice commands or its hilarious hidden talents. Whilst we are sure that as the function is developed further, this will improve, for now it is quite limited when faced with a thick accent or someone speaking a bit fast.

Google Assistant

Google announced and launched its voice recognition personal assistant at Google I/O in 2016. What is great about this programme is that it is able to have a two way conversation. Initially it was only available on messaging app Allo, but as of February 2017 it is available for download on all Android devices. Whilst not as vast in some of its capabilities as its competitors, it can perform searches, tell you the weather, and some reviewers have said it far outranks other platforms such as Siri and Alexa.

Alexa

A brainchild of the internet behemoth, Amazon, Alexa was developed to compete with the other big names on the market. The capabilities of this personal assistant include voice interaction, to do lists, alarm setting, streaming podcasts, playing audio books, providing weather and traffic updates, and playing music. A good all-rounder, it would be a big competitior for the Android and iOs offerings if it wasn’t for its limited supported devices selection.

Cortana

Released by Windows and available on Android and Windows compatible devices, this personal assistant application can answer questions, set reminders, and is available in eight different languages. Whilst it is a good application from a well-known name and has the advantage of being available on multiple different brands of device, it falls down in its limited functions and in the fact that it uses Bing for search results. Bing has tried hard to compete with Google over the years but the reality is that it just isn’t as good. Limiting a device just to Bing search results means that this otherwise good application, loses a few key points. Another important issue to note is some privacy concerns that have been raised such as the saving and storing of personal user data on a Windows server which then needs to be deleted manually by the user.

In conclusion, a lot depends on what operating system you have on your mobile or tablet device, but if you are open to suggestions, we would suggest you go for either Siri or Google Assist as both offer high levels of functionality, support, features, and usability and both from highly regarded technological pioneers.

Happy Driving!