“Apple’s Siri, introduced as the big new feature in the iPhone 4S, is facing its biggest competitor to date in Samsung’s S Voice, an extremely similar voice-activated mobile assistant that will make its retail debut with the Galaxy S III early next week,” Vlad Savov reports for The Verge.
“Both Siri and S Voice have a tendency to rely on external search engines for their results, sometimes integrating them in stub form within the app and sometimes throwing you out to a Google search. S Voice does the latter quite a bit more often than Siri does,” Savov reports. “In terms of speed, Siri has a distinct advantage over S Voice. It consistently provides an answer ahead of its Samsung competitor… Siri is also a lot more vocal than Samsung’s application. The majority of queries sent to the iPhone are greeted with an aural affirmation of some sort, whereas S Voice tends to provide results quietly (and also includes the option to turn off audio responses altogether). Which of the two approaches you prefer will be a matter of personal preference.”
Savov reports, “Taken in totality, I would say that S Voice offers a very good approximation of what Siri adds to the iPhone — helping you take notes, look things up, schedule meetings, or check the weather — but that extra functionality isn’t yet useful or polished enough to make these voice assistants a real selling point for new phones.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Sheesh. Obviously, the accent of the tester is an issue. A better test would be to use multiple people asking the same questions with different accents and tabulating the results.
Regardless, the slavish copiers at Samsung continue to have no shame. Let’s see how their Siri knockoff does when real Android settlers are hitting the hell out of their cut-rate data center that’s guaranteed to be nowhere near the quaility or capacity of Apple’s billion dollar+ data centers. Anyone who buys into “S Voice” thinking it’s “the same as Siri” is a fool.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Martin” for the heads up.]
S-Voice. ‘Nuff said.
Apple forces other manufacturers to advance just like them. Samsung and their own Voice function is just a way for them to be more like Apple.
I pity the fool! — Mr. T
S Voice… Because “S iri” was taken already.
S… = Sheet, spoken short
Just curious: does MDN employ an automatic Take Generator? It appears they just keep generating the same fine whine. While I consider myself a fan of Apple’s products, I find it hard not to note how the repetitive churlishness of MDN belies a real core insecurity.
Perhaps you should look somewhere else for your tech news, ottawa. A Canadian site, perhaps? Suggestion: If you’re looking for a more “balanced” take on all things Apple, try subscribing to the Enderle Group Newsletter. Or perhaps a chat site hosted by Paul Thurtott. Tried the Dell/Samsung/RIM/Motorola forums lately? How ’bout the New York Times?
Please do try to be more flexible and resourceful in your searches for “alternative” takes, OK? I’m sure you’ll be much happier with the results you find.
You should look somewhere else for news. Maybe somewhere in Canada. If you’re looking for a different take on Apple things maybe try Enderley? Or maybe some chat site? Have you tried other computer company forums? Or magazines, or newspapers?
If you were more open about places where you find your news, you might end up a lot happier.
…Brought to you by S Randian. 🙂
i see what you did here.
Well played.
Read into the MDN Take what you will, but MDN won’t change a bit. If you don’t like the Takes, then you should just skip them. But some of them are fairly witty and most of them are non-PC. I like that…
What does the S stands for? Hmm..No shame!!!!
S stands for truth, justice and the American way. Is it true that John Mellencamp and Meg Ryan are getting married?
I have tested Samsung products (Galaxy series) and of course stand firmly behind the iOS based Apple products as a clear preference. But, if Siri “consistently provides an answer ahead of its Samsung competitor,” then the Samsung product must be truly slow. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, Siri has been getting slower and slower to the response. I would be happy if I could get an response akin to what I’ve seen in the recent TV commercials just 25% of the time.
Once S Voice is being used by millions, if it is anywhere near the quality and responsiveness of Siri I will begin to lose a lot of faith in Apple. They have out so much time, effort and money into it that should be head and shoulders above any knockoff attempt.
Siri is still in Beta…
More like- Samsung has had 7 fucking MONTHS to try and rip off Apple and one-up them in the PA dept… And THIS janky bullshit is the best they could come up with? It’s laughable.
ORLY? And what would you have suggested, Your Jank-lessness?
“Sheesh. Obviously, the accent of the tester is an issue.” Seriously? He has the same accent as Jonathan Ive.
I remember the day when Samsung phones had, in my opinion, the best OS/firmware…better than Nokia, and Sony (before texting really took off, 2002-04)
Dont waste your time making responses on this site as its a waste of time. they are removed if you dare to consider samsung or android better in any way. shows cleatly how threatened apple users are.
Siri is rubbish anyway. Never works plus all the features are disabled outside USA.
LOL @ Tbone
“Truth, justice and the American way”
Truth, us govt is so corrupt it’s not funny
Justice, us govt kill their own people to wedge war on others
American way, be as wasteful as possible with no regard for anyone else.
IRIS is a mirror of siri and the developer says that, so why doesn’t apple pick on it?? It is available for any android phone. As far as voice recognition goes it’s been around long before any iphones, my old nokia had it. Apple didn’t create it, they bought it. Sorry but it’s true, I know apple fans won’t like it but that’s just how it is, get over it