The Next Mobile Phone Revolution Is Coming

For years, mobile phone owners have had access to just one digital assistant -- Siri on an iPhone, Google Now/Google Assistant on an Android device, Cortana on a Windows one. Now that's changing as multiple assistants proliferate to multiple phones. It sounds like an epidemic case of multiple personality disorder but it's actually a step toward a future in which the artificially intelligent entities will take over our gadgets and make them more powerful and easier to use.

Google Assistant, the unimaginatively named software that pops up on Android phones when you say "OK Google," is now available for iPhones. You can't ask it to take a selfie or perform some other tasks -- Apple keeps that functionality for its own Siri -- but you are free to enjoy its superior speech-recognition technology.1495121213990 With some technical skill, you can also run Google Assistant on Windows systems alongside the native digital assistant, Cortana (which, in turn, has been available on Android and iOS for a while). Since millions of people are using Alexa, the helpful voice inside the Echo speaker, smartphone maker HTC's new flagship phone, the U11, responds to both "OK Google" and "Alexa!" Samsung's Galaxy S8, for its part, includes both Google Assistant and the Korean company's own Bixby.