If Siri had an evil twin, what would she be called? Sara?
Guess who I found? Iris!...Yes, IRIS is SIRI.. spelt backwards!
Of course I'm not talking about Siri, a real person, but Siri the Iphone4S voice assistant.
Anyway, I had a little play with Iris today, and actually it was a lot of fun!
Iris is developed by Dexetra, a mobile app development company based in Cochin, India. It is little known, but I have a feeling it won't stay that way for long. The app is called Iris (alpha) - I presume it is still under development.Well, how does Iris work? Well it basically works like Siri, you ask it a question, and it answers you. You ask it to do a task and it will oblige.
So... how does it compare with Siri and what can it do? Well, I've had a play with both apps for an equal amount of time. It certainly has a different personality from Siri. I dunno how to describe it, the answer can be a little bit "out there". Sometimes it doesn't make sense at all. It doesn't say " I can't answer that " as much as Siri though. It's speed of reply is slower than Siri. Its voice recognition I feel is better than Siri, at least for me. It is powered by Google Voice/Vlingo. And it has New Zealand accent recognition. I don't think I have a real NZ accent but it certainly understands me better than Siri, which understand me 10% of the time. With Iris I get a 70% hit rate, which is good for me.
What about functionality? I tested a few things- asked the weather, asked it to call and message someone and it obliged. It also told me who Barack Obama was the first time I asked. (Siri never understand me even after about 10 tries). When asked about it's weight, Iris said 2 mb.
Conclusion?
You could call Iris a few things..
A Siri copycat
A poor man's Siri
A Siri wannabe
An upgraded Vlingo
An improved Talking Tom ( I hate that app)
All I can say is, it's free and actually quite fun.
