Cortana in intensive care

My Nokia 8.1 has Android Pie on it and is customised with a range of Microsoft software. I use Google services but I have been embedded in the Microsoft ecosystem for a couple of decades and used a WindowsPhone for years.

The current configuration set the assistant to Cortana and has the Microsoft Launcher. I have liked the launcher a lot since coming from WindowsPhone because at least there is some synergy with my PC.

Lately Cortana seems to be suffering from entropy. Things have stopped working. My calendar no long displays, my commute is faithfully ignored. It’s like timewarp back to 2014 when Cortana itself was a US only experience that didn’t even understand celsius was a thing and the metric system was popular. 

I noticed that Microsoft Launcher had Cortana built in and it was displaying my calendar. So I looked at the assistant settings for the first time in months and the Launcher could be set as the default assistant. 

So I tried this. The moment I did this Cortana could deal with my calendar again. The dedicated app worked worse than the integration of the launcher. The commute is still struggling just giving me traffic reports even though I have said I travel by bus.

Cortana seems not to have much focus at Microsoft. Maybe the death of WindowsPhone really just put Cortana in intensive care and it’s another service I will need to ditch soon.

Conversation 3 comments

  • coeus89

    22 June, 2019 - 1:36 pm

    <p>I agree with your assessment mostly. Cortana is more useful to me as a feature of the MS launcher than a stand-alone app. Her integration with email and calendar are what i mostly use her for. But for query related assistant tasks, the Google Assistant is more useful. (again in my opinion)</p>

  • Tony Barrett

    23 June, 2019 - 5:40 am

    <p>Cortana was one of the main tools MS designed for Windows Mobile, and an assistant makes much more sense on a mobile platform. On the PC, it's floundered, with little direction or purpose. The fact MS have now separated search from Cortana in 19H1 shows that they're preparing to run it down, and now that Alexa is available as an option, if you want an AI assistant on your PC, that's what more people will be familiar with. Cortana will probably hang around for a long time yet, but it's days are already numbered.</p><p>Google's assistant is by far the most powerful and flexible, but compared to what we'll be using in 5 years, they're all like toddlers at the moment.</p>

  • jules_wombat

    23 June, 2019 - 6:33 am

    <p>It looks like someone missed the memo</p>

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