iOS 5.0 :: Windows Phone Mango
Sure, Siri and Cards are some cool new features but beyond that, iOS 5 doesn’t feel all that revolutionary.
Mango, on the other hand, has seemingly come from nowhere, rivalling iOS 5 in terms of both usability and feature set. With thoroughly integrated social media and native apps like Local Scout and Bing, Mango is an excellent choice for non-techie phone users who want to avoid the API clusterf**k that is Android. Price varies.
iCloud :: Amazon Cloud
iCloud is very cool: it lets you share your media among all of your devices seamlessly and automatically through the power of cloud storage. Funny, that sounds suspiciously like this Amazon Cloud Drive I’ve been using for months now. Amazon’s first 5GB are free — just like iCloud — except music stored on Amazon’s cloud doesn’t count against your cap, which means that my 70GB of music cost me nothing for universal access.
Find My Friends :: FourSquare Radar
If you’ve gone ahead and updated to iOS 5 but discovered that you very much dislike Find My Friends and its moccasin map weirdness, Foursquare has just rolled out a new version of their popular friend-locating app, dubbed Foursquare Radar. In addition to telling you if you’re within spitting distance of your significant other or anyone one else you’re connected to, it also reminds notifies you of nearby places on your To-Do List, even when the app is closed. Free.
Photo Stream :: Flickr
Photo Stream. It’s like Flickr but with an auto-upload feature. Huzzah? Free.
Card :: SimplytoImpress.com
A wise man once said, “If you send me a ‘Card’, you will be deleted from contacts, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.” But he never said anything about Simply to Impress cards! Just upload your photos, set a layout, pay, and two days later the cards are delivered to your door. Price varies.
Siri :: Google Voice Search
I’ll admit I’m actually most interested in seeing Siri in action to see if she performs as well as Google’s Voice Search service. It allows you to input commands for calling contacts, texting, searching the web, looking up directions, taking notes and a bevy of other functions. Free.
Top art: Petr Malyshev/Shutterstock
Craig
Thursday, October 13, 2011 at 9:54 AMJust as a note – Mango also has voice commands & search built in, just hold down the windows button.
Mark
Thursday, October 13, 2011 at 12:02 PMIt’s not an alternative if its pure rubbish. Voice recognition in Mango is a joke. Myself and my friends all agree on this (we all own a mangoo phones)
ymala1
Thursday, October 13, 2011 at 4:55 PMWell, if how you spell mango is indicative of how you pronounce things, that might be your problem right there.
But all snarkiness aside, I personally found the voice recognition in Mango to be pretty good actually, feature-wise of course it doesn’t nearly match up to the awesome integration of Siri. Mileage varies I suppose.
Meritico
Thursday, October 13, 2011 at 9:43 PMThe main issue with voice recognition is the variations in accents and dialects.
I am Australian and most voice recognition is rubbish for me.
Ash
Thursday, October 13, 2011 at 10:05 AMAnother alternative to Siri on Android devices is Voice Actions (which is also available for iPhones for $9.99USD I think) and is free on Android from the Market. Works great. Try for example “Who created Star Wars” and be amazed at the response, or “Tell me my list of appointments for today”, etc.
Damon
Thursday, October 13, 2011 at 12:55 PMVoice Actions is awesome! I checked it out after this Siri hype and found it works exactly the same. If you have an iPhone 4, this is your Siri alternative. It even does the whole, funny answer thing if you ask it questions like, when will the world end, or do you love me? Seriously, if you have an Android, what are you waiting for, this is free people!!! Honestly, not sure why these guys aren’t taking Apple to court over Siri. Rather than the Galaxy Tab issues where the product looks somewhat similar, Siri appears a blatent rip off of Voice Actions.
Dan
Friday, October 14, 2011 at 1:32 AMI’m waiting for the Nokia Mango. I’ll take the one that looks like the N9….in RED. Along side of that, the Nokia Play 360. I see there is a software program that allows Android apps to work on Windows 7? That would kind of end the lack of app arguement real quick, wouldn’t it?