There was virtually no competition from Google when Apple launched Siri alongside the iPhone 4S in 2011. Android had voice actions of a sort, but they were extremely limited and not easy to access on most phones. With the Google Now redesign of search in 2012, Google leveraged its mountain of data to offer an alternative to Siri in mobile voice recognition. Apple has made Siri smarter with every iteration of iOS, but Google has been rolling voice features out quickly through the search app and taken integration to a new level with the Moto X. How does Android voice search and Siri compare after this week’s iOS 7 refresh?
Siri began mainly as an assistant app with a few search capabilities. While Apple has been beefing up search, it’s still working on making Siri better at managing your device. You can now tell Siri you want to disable or enable a setting, like Bluetooth. If you tell Siri to turn on Airplane Mode, the system even warns you that it will stop working if you proceed. It’s almost human sometimes.
Google’s Android voice search is much more focused on gathering data from the web, but it has slowly encroached on Siri’s “assistant” territory. The settings toggles are not yet available in Google voice search, although Samsung’s S Voice does have this feature.
When it comes to sending messages, the Google experience is more stripped down, but also faster. Siri is designed to do everything through voice, so it asks you if you want to send the message. If you don’t, it asks you what you want to do with it. It’s conversational, which can be useful or tedious, depending on your perspective. Google voice search populates the fields based on your input, then you have to tap the screen to send.
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