If you have ever used a Windows 10 PC then you know about Cortana. It is Microsoft’s attempt to compete with Apple’s Siri – a voice controlled helper or assistant. Cortana first made appearance when Windows 10 was first released and later it was made available to the Windows 10 Mobile devices. Now Microsoft has finally released Cortana app for Android. In the initial phase, they have decided to release Cortana for Android only for the United States and the China region. But in a few days, it will be available for everyone. You can actually download the APK from several unofficial sites that offer them and even install it on your device but Cortana simply will not work if you are not in a supported geographical location.
After the initial installation of the app and setting it up by signing in using any of your Microsoft accounts, you will be presented with a familiar interface – greetings on the top, news and weather forecast for your region and mic icon to ask anything. You can tap on this microphone icon and start asking questions – Cortana tries to understand and answer to the best of its ability.
You can use cortana to make a phone call to someone in the contact list, send an email message, set a reminder, set an alarm, converting currency, inquire about weather, search for something and many more things. You can even ask silly questions and Cortana reacts very cleverly to most of the questions.
In the settings for the Cortana app, you can choose to sync notifications with the Cortana on your Windows 10 PC (this way you can a notification on your PC about a missed call or new messages etc.), you can change the language and region, and create a shortcut to Cortana on the Android home-screen.
Considering that this is just the first public release of the Cortana app for Android, this app works brilliantly in all possible ways. It is anybody’s guess that Cortana for Android is going to improve with time which gives one more reason to stick with the Android devices in the near future.
You can get the Cortana app for Android from https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft.cortana&hl=en.