Siri’s first real competition hits Android phones today

Here comes Cluzee, a third-party app considered by some to be Siri’s first real competition. BGR had a nice writeup, coining the app as “a Siri-like service that includes capabilities even more impressive than Siri in some cases.”

ExtremeTech, however, highlighted that the app could only recognize one out of five popular Siri commands successfully — which does not bode well for an app that is trying to position itself as a more-capable Siri alternative.

IntoMobile probably had the most telling stat of them all:

Be warned, there are currently 133 1-star ratings out of a total of 241, so Cluzee may have some improvements to make.

We all realize it’s a rush to get the best Siri alternative to market, but so far, many have tried and many have massively failed. If the ratings are any indication, Cluzee looks to have the features but simply lack the functionality.

App developers also have to be wondering if Siri is too established to be overtaken. What if the key to beating Siri is not to build a better Siri, but build a better voice-activated app that serves a different purpose?

Then again, Android users probably want to see a Siri clone on their OS sooner than later. It seems that Cluzee has a lot of work to do before they are even mentioned in the same breath as Siri. Perhaps the winner here is a company that won’t rush their app to market for the sake of getting it out.


Hello iPhone 4S.

Despite no iPhone 5 (and investors not being too pleased), Apple fans were delighted today when the company announced the iPhone 4S in Cupertino. It wasn’t Apple’s most exciting announcement, but despite this, the phone is pretty darn cool. The new features and upgrades certainly make it worth the purchase.

Dan Frommer has an excellent post about why users should not be disappointed, and he’s right. The iPhone 4S will be the best smartphone on the market when released. Aside from a faster processor, updated camera and other spec upgrades, Siri seems to be the biggest addition — a personal assistant controlled by your voice.

While iPhone 4 owners may not be too thrilled about the 4S, any other smartphone owner has to seriously consider dropping a few hundred bucks on one of these. Also, Sprint users must be thrilled to finally get the phone on their network. As for myself, I’ll be preordering one of these babies on October 7th. Anything is better than the HTC Droid Incredible I have now.