iOS 5 Vs Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0: Google is worried about Siri

We have some interesting news to bring you in relation to the ongoing software rivalry between Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android platforms. Google CEO Eric Schmidt has just revealed that he sees Apple’s new Siri software as a competitive threat to Google’s business model.

If you ask any iPhone 4S owner for their thoughts on Siri, the majority will tell you that it is one of the most impressive things seen on a smartphone and another stroke of Apple’s magic where they take an existing technology and put their innovative spin on it.

On the other hand, most Android users will dismiss Siri at the first opportunity, by saying that Android already had it in the first place, and that it basically does the same funtions as Siri.

Recent comments made by Schmidt though may be deemed as a complete backtrack to previous comments made by the CEO in which he dismissed Apple as a competitive threat. Here is what he said at a recent U.S. Senate antitrust subcommittee, as reported from Apple Insider:

”Apple has launched an entirely new approach to search technology with Siri, its voice-activated search and task-completion service built into the iPhone 4S. Apple’s Siri is a significant development—a voice-activated means of accessing answers through iPhones that demonstrates the innovations in search. Google has many strong competitors and we sometimes fail to anticipate the competitive threat posed by new methods of accessing information.”

There’s a lot of information to digest there, but the clearest indication there is that Google do see Apple as a threat, and Siri is a big factor because of this. Ice Cream Sandwich will include some more voice to text features upon release, such as being able to send an SMS message to users just by voice only – similar to the way in which Siri works.

However, two innovative features that will be unique to Ice Cream Sandwich, are the Face Unlock and Android Beam features. Face Unlock will unlock your Android 4.0 handset by using face recognition only, while Android Beam will allow users to exchange data almost instantly between two Android 4.0 handsets using NFC technology. The upcoming Galaxy Nexus will be the first handset to showcase both when it launches later on this month.

What are your thoughts on the comments from Google’s CEO? If you are an Android fan, do you admit that Siri is very impressive, or do you believe that Ice Cream Sandwich will offer the same functionality in future software updates?

Source is
http://www.product-reviews.net/2011/11/07/ios-5-vs-ice-cream-sandwich-4-0-google-is-worried-about-siri/

iOS 5 release date brings magic but no Siri to iPhone 4, 3GS on Oct 12

Only buyers of the new iPhone 4S get the Siri voice assistant feature of iOS 5, but those who stay home and download iOS 5 for their iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS will get the rest of the new features two days sooner. The 4S hits stores on October 14th, keeping with Apple’s tradition of Friday major retail launches. But the download version of iOS 5, a free gift from Apple to users of third and fourth generation iPhones, will surface online two days earlier on October 12th. As is the case with installing any new operating system on any piece of older slower hardware, some iOS 5 features will run more slowly on the iPhone 4 and especially the iPhone 3GS than they will on the new iPhone 4S which sports a significantly faster dual core processor. Only two headlining iOS 5 features, AirPlay Mirroring and Siri, require so much computing horsepower that they’ll only run on the latest iPhone and not the previous iterations. Of the two, only Siri will be widely missed…

Each new iPhone generation has its own “killer” feature around which Apple shapes its marketing campaign. For the iPhone 3G it was 3G networking, For the iPhone 4 it was FaceTime. For the iPhone 3GS it was… well, we’ll get back to you on that if we ever figure out what the 3GS was all about. But this time it’s unmistakably Siri for the iPhone 4S. Voice commands are nothing new, but they’ve long tended to be either overly simplistic or overly obtuse. Siri, based on the demos, puts a nearly human face on voice recognition. It also requires significant processing power to calculate in real time what it is the user it referring to and then come up with an appropriate answer or action. The iPhone 4 and 3GS, simply put, can’t do that. Apple is banking that despite all of the rest of the iOS 5 magic being given away to those users for free, the lack of Siri will drive at least some of them to end up buying an iPhone 4S after all. We’ll find out starting next week, as iOS 5 lands on Wednesday and the iPhone 4S with iOS 5 preinstalled hits stores on Friday. iPhone 4 and 3GS users, which way are you leaning on the iPhone 4S? Share your comments below.

Source is http://www.beatweek.com/news/9599-ios-5-release-date-brings-magic-but-no-siri-to-iphone-4-3gs-on-oct-12/