Iris For Android: Kind Of Like Siri, But For Android

Have an Android phone? Jealous of Siri? Probably not. But if you are! There’s a new application called Iris (Siri backwards, heh) that kind of, sort of emulates what Siri does. You tap a mic, you talk and Iris responds to you.

What’s it do?

Let’s be honest here, Android has always had an emphasis on voice control in its OS but it’s never been as converational as Siri is for the iPhone 4S. Iris, which was amazingly completed in eight hours by Android dev Narayan Babu and his team at Dexetra, is a heckuva more conversational. It understands the questions you ask by voice and then spits out answers back at you. It’s not always accurate (neither is Siri) but it’s only in alpha and has a pretty good sense of humour about itself. You can have a general conversation with Iris or ask her questions about science, history, culture and more. Iris doesn’t seem to have any maths skills but she’s quick on the draw with Wikipedia responses (which is all I really want).

Why do we like it?

The app isn’t nearly as useful as Siri, it’s also a lot slower than Siri but it’s proof that the Android dev community is amazing. That’s more or less the reason I love Iris, Android devs can get inspired from an idea and turn it around into a usable app in no time. Iris does a pretty good job in understanding what I’m saying, which is great! But it doesn’t do as good a job processing my question into a relevant answer. When I asked what 5+5 was, it responded “the audio work by Kit Clayton vs Safety Scissors”. Basic, simpler and non-math queries work decently well but you shouldn’t expect it to solve the harder questions (though it’ll be funny!). It flashes the potential every now and again though.