This post was published 9 years, 3 months ago. Due to the rapidly evolving world of technology, some material it contains may no longer be applicable.
Over the course of the past month or so, many APKs for early versions of Cortana for Android have been popping around social media. These have been shared by unofficial sources but now Microsoft has actually release the app onto Google Play in public beta.
For those who don’t know, Cortana is Microsoft’s digital assistant (think Siri or Google Now) and is built into Windows 10 both on mobile and the desktop. Microsoft announced a while back that she would be coming to Android and iOS just like Google Now, but until recently was not officially available.
On their blog yesterday, they announced that Cortana is now available in public beta:
Today, we’re pleased to make the beta of the Cortana app available to all Android phone users.
They also stated that if you’re running Windows 10, Cortana for Android will work in unison with your desktop. This is something we haven’t seen much of with Google Now. Sure, we get notifications through Chrome about related events or weather, but it’s not quite as fully fledged or integrated with its mobile counterpart the way Cortana is.
However, the Android version of Cortana still lacks one great feature: voice activation (by name). Microsoft has said that this isn’t available “yet” but we’re hoping it happens soon!
For anyone interested, you can sign up to test and download the beta version of Cortana here. Currently, this release is only available in the U.S. but Microsoft plans to bring it to other parts of the world soon.
Source: Windows Blog