Digital Assistants nowadays have been a very common sighting with almost all major devices. Apple's "Siri", Android's "Google Now", Amazon's "Alexa" or Microsoft's "Cortana", each one of them gets their assigned jobs done efficiently and are pretty popular as the new age "problem solvers" in the sphere of voice-driven digital assistance.
To heat up the competition even further, Microsoft has come up with a major upgrade for its "Cortana" app to be used on iPhone. According to Trusted Reviews, it's a ploy on Microsoft's part to challenge iPhone's own digital assistant software "Siri". The new update has made it easier for the iPhone users to use "Cortana". The update was first promised by Microsoft way back in December 2016.
The new "Cortana" app is faster, taking in voice commands immediately. Like Android's "Google Now", it will show the latest information for news, flights or deliveries taken from the user's emails. A number of actions, like sending emails, setting alarms and reminders, and checking the weather can be performed by virtue of the upgraded "Cortana" app.
While using the "Cortana", "quick action" buttons are brought up for information and commands without speaking just by touching an icon on the lower left side. As reported by Apple Insider, Microsoft has revamped the reminders function, besides the app's calling and texting options. Also, the app will now provide full page answers to the queries.
On certain points, though, "Siri" has seen the better of "Cortana". "Cortana" can't be triggered outside of the app and it can't get into many native iOS services, owing to the restrictions imposed by Apple. In the language support section as well, "Siri" gets the better of "Cortana", offering 21 languages in 36 countries, compared to that of "Cortana" offering only 8 in 13.
The new upgraded version of "Cortana" can be very handy to people using a computer with Windows 10 OS, which has "Cortana" integrated. Besides, "Siri" has been often criticized by iPhone users as a "weaker Smartphone-based artificial intelligence". This new upgrade of Microsoft "Cortana" will be a welcome alternative for the iOS users.
