How to impress your friends: 40+ voice searches on Jelly Bean

Find me on Google+: https://plus.google.com/1001307629724...

I never make videos, but felt compelled to share the many new voice capabilities on +Android, some of which were not demoed on stage during Google I/O 2012. You may be surprised by some answers, notably those provided by the Knowledge Graph. This is not a performance or comparison test (I don't have an iPhone 4S or a Samsung Galaxy S3).

UPDATE: July 5, 2012. CaptainPrad has posted a question-by-question comparison video using Siri. Check his video response below or click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gsxuC... . Thanks for making it!

Also, sorry about the quality. My old Canon PowerShot does NOT do justice to the beautiful screen on the Galaxy Nexus.

Disclaimer: the only edits I made were to cut time between each of my queries, as well as re-order some of the demos from the original order I recorded them in, so they would fit into categories. None of the queries themselves have been edited or cut down, and the sequences are intact. The processing time happened exactly as you see. This demo is made on the early build of Android 4.1 (JRN84D, takju build for Galaxy Nexus I/O edition), on a wifi connection. Consider this beta.

A few observations:

1. Google will give you walking or driving directions directly, if you specify it. Asking for transit or biking directions does not work at the moment.

2. Google is able to distinguish how 'long' a bridge is in length vs. how 'long' a movie is in duration. That's assuming the data already exists in the KG.

3. Local search, coupled with auto-correct, is able to properly locate and spell 'Worcester Mass' and 'Wooster College', even though these places are in different states and can be pronounced the same way (or at least, I did).

4. The voice will speak back any answer it finds in the KG; however, Google currently requires that your query somewhat matches the way attributes are labeled in the Graph. For example, asking for the 'height requirement' of Space Mountain works, but asking 'how tall do I have to be for Space Mountain' does not work at the moment, because this particular data is labeled as 'height requirement'.

5. In order for answer cards to work properly, everything on your device (and the Google Now app) must be set to US English. More languages will be available soon.

• Category

  Science & Technology

[Doug Evans]

It still does a pretty mediocre job at adding events to calendar. It will understand every word I say and get it completely wrong a good portion of the time.

[Jean-Louis Nguyen]

With the latest update (April), these commands usually work this way: say 'remind me to walk the dog' to create a note, or 'remind me to walk the dog at 2pm' to set an alarm. To create a calendar event, the only command that works for me is to say "create an event called walk the dog tomorrow at 2pm" - it's definitely not perfect, hopefully Google can make that distinction in the future.

[ivansfreshcut]

"Show me pictures of Android eating Apple" haha

[rhinnawi95]

How come you get cards for everything and on my GS4, Google Now just searches the web right away?

[Ian Monroe]

You're missing "what is the temperament of a dingo"

[Anusha Itnal]

i have nexus 4..only weather card works..how to make other cards work too?

[LuckiZero]

British English = Male Voice

American English = Female Voice

[Bryan Guerrero]

True, Siri was it's own company. Verizon wanted to buy it to put it on their DROID line of phone as a selling point -- but Apple heard the rumour and they quickly snatched the deal.

[Kunal Bansal]

try speaking anything and then write down...



[StopLossLOL]

test



[fusiontv1]

are you canadian?



[Christos Nicolaou]

It works without wifi

[Da Mobb]

the name siri and its app interface belongs to Apple, but the speech understanding is done by Nuance server. Even Samsung galaxy TV and the galaxy S4 uses Nuance server also and you can use Google Now alongside it