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.