One of the candidates to be present in Android 4.1 Jelly Bean did not miss the party last Wednesday, when Google presented the new version of its operating system. We are talking about the new functions of Google Search, the voice search engine of its platform, which has been enriched with the possibility of making requests very similar to those of the virtual butler of the iPhone, Siri.
But it is not that they are only very similar: in practice, both assistants perform the same functions. And that's not all. As we have seen in a test carried out by Techno Buffalo colleagues, the results offered by Google Search put Siri on the ropes.
The test was conducted using an iPhone 4S equipped with the second iOS 6 Developer Beta, as well as a Samsung Galaxy Nexus with the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean trial version. Thus, both start on equal terms: we are talking about the most recent editions of the native terminals of both houses, each with the most recent version of the operating system under test.
The first thing that the analysis between the two applications shows is that Google Search is faster. The analysis carried out on the user's request is visibly faster, as the presence of the information on the screen is so agile than what the requestor requests.
In addition, not only by speed, Google Search wins the hand. When the mobile indicates the information requested to the user, it also does so using a much more natural and human voice than Siri does "", although we must recognize the iPhone assistant that this robotic point is very evocative for lovers of the science fiction ””.
With Google Search, you can not only perform naturalized searches for online content. On the other hand, we found that functions of the phone itself can also be controlled, as we would with Siri. We check that when we request that an alarm be triggered after a time that we want to request. However, the iPhone with iOS 6 not only schedules the warning, but also reflects a countdown on the screen.
Where Google Search has shown itself to falter is in the agenda. When the user asks the system to include a task to be done, it takes time to be recognized and integrated into the agenda, showing somewhat more clumsy behavior than seen in Siri. However, the iPhone butler ends up stumbling where Google Search is able to pull out muscle and show high speed.
And is that if we asked both assistants to show us certain images online, Siri would ask us for a second confirmation, while Google Search would interpret with greater precision what we are looking for.
In spite of everything, where both applications fail is in the catalog of available languages. At the moment, both Siri and Google Seach work with very specific vernacular languages. The proposal that includes Android only does it in English, while Siri only manages with the language of Shakespeare, as well as in French, German and Japanese. In spite of everything, in autumn the butler of Apple will speak many more languages, among them, Spanish. The question remains whether Google would respond in polyglot ways in this regard by then.
