Google Now Starts Understanding Hindi / Hinglish Voice Phrases [Video]

Google Now, the Android based virtual mobile assistant from Google has improved a lot compared to where it was few months ago. I personally use it quite frequently during my travels and to make searches on the move. For this IPL season, it also offers schedules, scores among other things.

Over last few weeks they have added yet another feature that will help Indians tremendously. Google’s voice recognition now understands Hindi and Hinglish phrases.

To test it out, I threw simple to complex Hindi phrases at Google Now and more often than not, it has correctly guessed what I am trying to say. Infact, if you ask movie names, song titles it works very well even for some really complex hindi phrases.

Here is a quick video I made to demonstrate how well Google Now performs with Hindi & Hinglish languages.

Google Now Vs Apple Siri vs Microsoft Cortana

Microsoft is the latest company to launch their own virtual assistant on Windows phone, Cortana. It shipped with their Windows phone 8.1 update and from what we hear, they have done a good job with it.

So how do they stack up against each other?

Microsoft Cortana being the youngest of the lot has learned from Google Now and Apple Siri and come up with a version that many have actually praised. It is still in beta stage and will improve a lot over next few updates.

Apple on the other hand was the first to launch their virtual assistant Siri. While it has got many updates over time, it has not been able to meet high expectations Apple users had from it. Infact, many have termed it as one of the biggest disappointments of iOS7

Google Now on the other hand has been improving at steady pace. They have launched new updates and features frequently. What is impressive about Google Now is the speech recognition part, which identifies english language even a heavily accented one quite well. And now they are extending it to other languages like Hindi as well.

The core and the most important aspect for success of any mobile virtual assistant is it’s speech recognition, and Google Now wins hands down in that department.

If you are an Android user, do throw some Hindi / Hinglish phrases and see how it responds.. You will be surprised!