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How we use ours: * "Alexa, what's the weather look like?" (every day) * "Alexa, set a timer for 10 minutes" * "Alexa, what time is it?" (we don't have any cl

by smackfu 11y ago

How we use ours: * "Alexa, what's the weather look like?" (every day) * "Alexa, set a timer for 10 minutes" * "Alexa, what time is it?" (we don't have any clocks in our living room.) * "Alexa, play some 80's music." (this works great if you just want some music playing) Also, it's a pretty good Bluetooth speaker. Yes, you can do most of this stuff on an iPhone with Siri, but this kind of button-less voice control is just better.

koala_man 11y ago
>you can do most of this stuff on an iPhone with Siri, but this kind of button-less voice control is just better Have you tried the newer Android phones with the same kind of button-less voice control?
- smackfu 11y ago
  No, I haven't. How do they work if you can't look at the screen? Siri tends to be bad about that. Like "how's the weather" gets a response of "Here's the forecast:" and shows it on the screen. One of the things with Echo is that it doesn't have a screen, so everything has voice responses.
  - sp332 11y ago
    If Google understands the content it's presenting, like weather, it will read it out loud to you. If a wikipedia article is the first result, it will read the entire first paragraph out loud.
  - notatoad 11y ago
    google now will try it's best to answer questions out loud if they were asked that way. Your weather example works, but in general it's inconsistent enough that i can't assume it will give me an audible answer, and I usually limit myself to speaking only questions or commands that i know to work.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > google now will try it's best to answer questions out loud if they were asked that way. And its a fairly amazing technical achievement, but its still got a long way to go -- if you ask when a business opens, it will show you the hours but not tell you the time it opens, even though Google has enough semantic understanding of the open/close times to tell you on the results page with the hours that it is "closing soon" or "closed now" if that is the case.
- nonexpectation 11y ago
  I have the Moto X 2014 running Andrdoid 5.0, and it does not compare. The X rarely understands anything I say, even after training multiple times. It's also extremely slow to respond when it does understand. The X takes around 15 seconds to tell me the weather, while the Echo has it right away.

by smackfu 11y ago

koala_man 11y ago

>you can do most of this stuff on an iPhone with Siri, but this kind of button-less voice control is just better Have you tried the newer Android phones with the same kind of button-less voice control?

smackfu 11y ago
No, I haven't. How do they work if you can't look at the screen? Siri tends to be bad about that. Like "how's the weather" gets a response of "Here's the forecast:" and shows it on the screen. One of the things with Echo is that it doesn't have a screen, so everything has voice responses.
- sp332 11y ago
  If Google understands the content it's presenting, like weather, it will read it out loud to you. If a wikipedia article is the first result, it will read the entire first paragraph out loud.
- notatoad 11y ago
  google now will try it's best to answer questions out loud if they were asked that way. Your weather example works, but in general it's inconsistent enough that i can't assume it will give me an audible answer, and I usually limit myself to speaking only questions or commands that i know to work.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > google now will try it's best to answer questions out loud if they were asked that way. And its a fairly amazing technical achievement, but its still got a long way to go -- if you ask when a business opens, it will show you the hours but not tell you the time it opens, even though Google has enough semantic understanding of the open/close times to tell you on the results page with the hours that it is "closing soon" or "closed now" if that is the case.
nonexpectation 11y ago
I have the Moto X 2014 running Andrdoid 5.0, and it does not compare. The X rarely understands anything I say, even after training multiple times. It's also extremely slow to respond when it does understand. The X takes around 15 seconds to tell me the weather, while the Echo has it right away.