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Review: IRIS – Android’s Siri

By Sami Mughal

Within 8 hours of Apple announcing the latest feature on their new iPhone 4S, Siri, Dexetra came out with their own version. Ironically it is called Iris, which is Siri spelt backwards.
Being more of an android person myself, I had to give it a go, so I downloaded it.
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.dexetra.iris

Now before you read any of the rest, this is a remarkable effort in the amount of time they have had (since the 4S release!).
But talking to it, has achieved some interesting results.
I can understand it not liking things I say, with the accent and all, but the things it does understand, I found the results to be a bit funny.
It does do certain things fairly okay.
It will make phone calls for you.
It will send messages, even though I found the format a bit confusing.
Ask it the weather and it says ‘NO!’.
I asked it if it can tweet for me. It thought I said ‘can you breed for me?’. And the response was ‘Yes I can!’
I asked it for some information, which it thought to be the word ‘battle’.
The response was: Humans created you, humans shall destroy you.
I asked: Read something funny. It thought ‘Really something funny’. Response was: She is amused when people are hurt. Lots of pain. I don’t want to hurt myself too much to make her happy.

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I have to say I did find the app amusing, specially when it came out with the random replies. However, I did not really find it very useful. I can make phone calls without requiring this app. I have not mastered the art of sending texts yet, but I have not really had the need to do that. I can ask Voice Search different questions and get better answers.
My verdict: Amusing but not useful. However, for the amount of time they have had, it is a very good effort, and hopefully when it comes out of Alpha release, it may be nothing less of impressive. 
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Article first published as Iris, Android’s SIRI on Technorati.

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