Love them or
hate them, virtual assistants are here to stay. After Apple announced Siri,
Google’s Now service and Microsoft’s recently-unveiled Cortana, BlackBerry too
has decided to jump into the pack and announce its new “BlackBerry Assistant”.
The feature
will come with the upcoming BlackBerry 10.3 OS update and will debut on the
squarish Passport device.
You interact
with it in the usual methods and it does all the tasks you would expect. Not
everything is known, but you can take phone calls, set up appointments, update
your status, change settings and the lot.
It can read
your messages aloud to you when you’re driving. Following the Google way, there
are supposedly a few Easter eggs built-in. We’re yet to see how clever they
are.
The
assistant learns more of your habits the more you live with it and will offer
its own suggestions as well. Of course, an advantage which Passport will give
you will be the option to type on the trademark keyboard as well, something
which Siri (and most others for that matter) can’t make use of.
We don’t
know if it is as fun as Siri and Cortana; there is currently no word on whether
you can hear a knock knock joke from it, but BlackBerry is sure that the
assistant is at least more accurate than its current competitors.
The v10.3
update should bring the feature to other BlackBerry devices too. It certainly
isn’t going to change the fortunes of the platform on its own, but should
further bridge the gap between BlackBerry and its rivals.
No word as
to when you should expect the update on your phone.
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