Apple has been pushing its Siri voice commands feature hard in its adverts, but it’s nothing new to Android users, who have had voice control on their handsets since 2010.
Although Apple’s slick adverts certainly make Siri look a very useful tool, our own experiences have been much more of a mixed bag, with the app becoming hopelessly flummoxed by some UK accents.
It proved comically bad at Welsh accents – so much so that we simply gave up – and there’s no shortage of reports from around the UK of similar problems.
Although Android voice actions offer a little less functionality, we’ve found them to be far more accurate, and in turn, far more useful.
Keen to make push home the advantage, Motorola released two videos pitching the iPhone’s Siri against Android’s Voice Actions – with the Google OS appearing the clear winner in every test. Here’s one of them:
Second opinion
Suspecting that Motorola may have embellished the results a tad, tech site Gizmodo ran their own comparison and also found that Google triumphed in most areas.
Pitting the similarly spec’d Galaxy Nexus, against the iPhone 4s, Gizmodo found that Google’s Voice Actions were quicker for sending text messages, navigation (where it was miles ahead), memos and browsing, while Siri was ahead in calendar management and weather (just).
Noting that, “in terms of speed and accuracy, Google Voice Actions was ahead in almost all of our tests,” Gizmodo’s own test confirms what we already suspected: Android really is better than the iPhone when it comes to voice commands.
Note for UK users:
Frustratingly, not all of Google’s Voice commands work in the UK. Here’s the actions that do work:
- send text to [contact] [message]
- call [business]
- call [contact]
- go to [website]
- navigate to [location/business name]
- directions to [location/business name]
- map of [location]
