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.

[420bars]

Poor Apple fans think they had this type of technology before Android did. The fact is apple brought siri, it was supposed to be for a Verizon Android in fact Apple does not make any of their products really. I don't really dislike Apple I mean they do have nice looking products that offer basic usage for most. But I prefer to have options as far as I can tell windows in android do much more things and give you the freedom to do what you want

[ekse876]

Yeah. Real Estate!

[Amogh Jahagirdar]

nice question u read the book hitchhikers guide to the galaxy right

[Amogh Pershad]

My phone did the same thing. I needed to go to settings and turn on google now. That may be the problem. Also, set your language to US English

[Michael Chazy Chaz Poreotics Ho]

Yes, the answer to life, the universe, and everything is indeed 42.

[Daan Schouten]

Hello,

Great video, but when I tell my N4 to "remind me to walk the dog in 2 hours" it searches it on the internet. So it just googles what I said. Even if it gets the sentence exactly right is still doesn't do what is does at your device. Any help?

[Liew Zhao Wei]

4:22

Do a barrell roll haha

[alaa alnajaffi]

H arid $d zu zu FC so Dr

[Johann Schmidt]

Ugh, disgusting.

[tangkeincharge]

wow... the Egyptian museum one is amazing

[SurvivalMCBrothers]

Zerg Rush it!!!