
Siri Android Clones Are Laughable At Best - FluidDjango
http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/03/siri-android-clones-are-laughable-at-best/
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Pewpewarrows
Is this what passes for journalism on TechCrunch these days? Three short
paragraphs that are backed with maybe 30 seconds of Internet research?

For those who actually care, Android has had great "Siri"-like apps outside of
the built-in voice system for a while now, with Vlingo [1] leading the pack.
Asking pretty much any respected Android mailing list / channel / forum will
give you Vlingo as the de-facto Siri for Android that we and iOS users have
had before Siri even existed. With one exception: the two-way conversation
that Siri has right now. That's the nice feature that I hadn't seen before the
Siri-buzzword-madness started.

[1] <https://market.android.com/details?id=com.vlingo.client>

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philbarr
I think they need to spend more time getting voice recognition software, on
all devices including iPhone and Android, to recognise speech across many more
regional dialects. I'm from the north west of England and didn't think my
"lancyshire" accent was _that_ bad, but I can hardly get Android to recognise
_anything_ I say. Maybe it gets it right one in twenty times at best, which
makes it unusable. My wife (an Apple fan-girl) has more luck with Siri, but it
still gets it wrong enough that you have to stare intently at the screen just
to make sure it's not going to phone your Mum by accident.

People with strong accents all over the UK probably find these things
unusable. I wonder, is it the same in the US? Do these things only ever get
tested in San Francisco? (probably a little unfair, but still...)

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ifyouwillit
agree with this completely. i've tried a few and none of them work very well.
need something that allows plain language and doesn't require special
'languages' or commands.

