Apple’s Siri is one of the most important features for the company, and while it does well enough on its own right, some folks still want to see how it compares to the competition like Google Assistant.
Turns out, despite plenty of improvements, Siri still trails behind Google’s own digital assistant when it comes to understanding and answering queries. MacRumors has the report from Gene Munster of Loup Ventures, detailing how Siri was able to answer 83.1% of questions correctly, while it understood 99.8 percent of those queries.
According to Munster, while Apple’s Siri is great, Google Assistant is still the leader. Google’s own assistant was able to understand 100 percent of the queries, and was able to answer 92.9% of them correctly. Meanwhile, Amazon’s Alexa was actually able to correctly understand 99.9% of the queries, but answering them correctly saw a sharp decline to just 79.8%.
But! When it comes to Siri alone, the digital assistant has been getting consistently better:
The test required Munster to query the digital assistants with 800 different instances, and it covered smartphones only. For Siri, the iPhone was running iOS 12.4, while Google Assistant was tested on a Pixel XL, and, interestingly, Alexa was tested within the iOS app. Each of the devices were asked the same questions, things like:
- Local – Where is the nearest coffee shop?
- Commerce – Order me more paper towels.
- Navigation – How do I get to Uptown on the bus?
- Information – Who do the Twins play tonight?
- Command – Remind me to call Jerome at 2 pm today
Siri apparently leads the way when it comes to commands like checking the calendar, email related tasks, and phone-related functions:
Siri continues to prove more useful with phone-related functions like calling, texting, emailing, calendar, and music. Both Siri and Google Assistant, which are baked into the OS of the phone, far outperformed Alexa in the Command section.
It sounds like Google Assistant is going to retain its lead for quite some time, but it’s still impressive to see how well Siri has improved over the last couple of years.
Are you generally happy with Siri? How would you like to see Apple improve its digital assistant?