Apple has Siri and Google has Google Now, what does Microsoft have? It had Bing search on its phones till now, but things are expected to change soon as the next version of Windows Phone – Windows Phone 8.1 which is expected during Spring will come with Microsoft’s very own voice based personal assistant and it will be called – Cortana.
The Verge managed to get a hold of the voice assistant prior to launch and here is how it looks. The name Cortana belongs to a character of Microsoft’s popular Halo game. Unlike the game, Cortana on Windows Phone 8.1 is just a circular animated icon. Cortana does a lot of things Siri can do – like call their owners with names that they set and it will also record the information in a Notebook system.
Using the Notebook system, the Cortana digital assistant can access information from the smartphone such as location data, behaviors, personal information, reminders, and contact information. It can also track flights or other mentions in emails, which will let it generate notifications. Cortana takes its features from both Siri and Google Now and tries to bring the best of both the worlds.
Cortana will use Bing for its search and will use data from FourSquare to provide contextual data. Cortana is just the name that Microsoft is using internally and it can be anything when they finally announce the feature during the Build conference in April.