If you’re one of the small group of people out there who owns a smartphone running Windows Phone 8 or 8.1, or a computer running Windows 10, you probably recognise Cortana. Effectively Microsoft’s answer to Siri and Google Now, Cortana is Microsoft’s answer to a voice-operated assistant that lets you speak to your phone to have it perform tasks for you, such as setting reminders, finding out things you need to know, or messaging contacts.
Though developed for Microsoft’s own devices, Microsoft of late have been very eager to expand the reach of Cortana and turn it into the personal assistant behind ALL your devices. To that end, the company has also released Cortana as apps for iOS and Android. But while these app-based versions of Cortana might allow you to message people with your voice or look up information from the internet, it’s not really integrated with Android or iOS. There’s only so much the developers can do when they don’t control the operating system.
However, a new announcement from Cyanogen suggests that this could change.
For several years now, a team of developers have made waves with a fork of the Android system known as Cyanogen. Cyanogen’s original intention was to take what was good from stock Android systems and modify the rest, to create a system that gives control and customisability over how their smartphone looks and works back to the actual user. Cyanogen has since become a corporation – of which Microsoft is a key investor – and the system has become a standard mobile phone OS in its own right, with Cyanogen OS becoming the original system of choice for the OnePlus One and many other phones; with the older Cyanogenmod remaining the tool of choice for replacing stock Android and installing Cyanogen to traditional Android-powered phones.
Cyanogen’s desire to put control back in the hands of the user has put the system regularly at odds with Google’s ethos; and Cyanogen has ditched many standard Android services for equivalents, either home-grown or ran by competitors such as Microsoft. And now, the company has revealed that it’s working with Microsoft to integrate Cortana into Cyanogen- kicking the traditional Android voice assistant, Google Now, out onto the street.
It’s not clear exactly how this will compare to the assistant on other platforms, but Cyanogen hints that it could offer better control over third-party apps than rivals like Google or Apple’s Siri. You could tell Spotify to play specific songs or playlists, for instance. We should not have long to wait to find out how well this pairing works, however – Cyanogen have claimed Cortana will start in her new role from the very next Cyanogen OS release.
