Why I gave up Google Assistant and switched to Alice from Yandex

Google Assistant is just a super assistant. It never ceases to amaze me how Google managed to make it so smart, useful, and user-friendly. The difference was especially noticeable against the background of Siri, which, frankly, was impossible to use in principle. Therefore, when I realized that Google Assistant, not only correctly recognizes my requests, uttered even with a full mouth, gives the correct answers to them, but at the same time also performs not the smallest assignments, I realized that this is the best that could happen to artificial intelligence. But getting to know Alice changed everything.

Why I gave up Google Assistant and switched to Alice from Yandex

I switched to Alice and I like everything

In fact, I undertook to test Alice at the dawn of her development three years ago. Then I really liked her live pronunciation, which contrasted strongly with the synthesized computer voice of Google Assistant. Otherwise, it was a little useless development, only good for killing time with a lengthy conversation, which Alice — to her credit — was pretty good. It’s a pity that she wasn’t good for more, and I happily forgot about her for the next couple of years.

Which is better for a smart home: Alice or Google Assistant

Why I gave up Google Assistant and switched to Alice from Yandex

Alice may not be smarter than Google Assistant, but it's more pleasant to communicate with her, and in my use case she clearly wins

To return to Alice, I was prompted by the purchase of smart lamps from Xiaomi, with which I fired up to control my voice. At first, of course, I tried to set up control through the Google Assistant, but for some reason all the configurations flashed for me, so, of course, it was impossible to use it. Then I installed Alice, because I heard that she was managing a smart home with a bang, I quickly set everything up and realized that, yes, the rumors were not a lie. Alice could not only turn the light on and off, but also adjust the color temperature, make the light brighter or darker, depending on what I asked her to do.

But since it would be a little unwise to give up Google Assistant just for the sake of it, I began to explore Alice's features further.

After subscribing to Yandex.Plus and a Tinkoff x Yandex bank card, I began to use Yandex.Music and Yandex.Taxi more actively. The first service became free after registration of the subscription, and the second allowed receiving cashback and a discount on travel. It was then that Alice came in handy for me. Firstly, now I got the opportunity to simply ask her to turn on any tracks or offer me something new, and in the case of a taxi, instead of typing addresses in the Yandex.Taxi application manually, I could simply ask to call a car with the command 'Call a taxi home'. Alice herself determined where I was and gave the car wherever needed. As a result, a taxi call began to take only 3-5 seconds instead of one and a half to two minutes.

Is it possible to turn off the TV with a voice from a smartphone

Why I gave up Google Assistant and switched to Alice from Yandex

Turning off the TV with Alice is a super feature that I really missed

Cool? Yes, but it wasn't enough for me. However, fortunately for me, around the same time Samsung announced that now some of its TVs work with Alice, allowing them to be controlled by voice. I checked and my model ended up on the list. I quickly carried out the necessary manipulations, set up a pairing between the TV and a smartphone with Alice installed and got another smart device. I will say right away that it is inconvenient and corny to control playback, volume and other aspects with a voice. Much easier to press a button on the remote. But turning off the TV before going to bed, when you don't know where the remote has gone, is a sweet thing. After all, you will not get out of bed half asleep and look for it, and the smartphone, oddly enough, is always at the head of the bed and is ready to help.

It is quite indicative, however, that I always performed all these manipulations from a separate application and did not appoint Alice as a regular voice assistant instead of Google Assistant. It happened completely unexpectedly even for me.

At some point, I also began to use the identifier of numbers from Yandex, as I began to receive a bunch of unnecessary calls. However, the problem was that in the latest versions Android there was a limitation that allows only a regular voice assistant to scan numbers. Therefore, in order to allow Yandex to determine my numbers, I had no choice but to appoint Alice as the default assistant, giving her the ability to determine the source of the call and display information about it on the screen right during the call.

By now, Alice has been my main assistant for about three or four months. Yes, in some ways it is really inferior to Google Assistant. For example, it cannot be forced to read the content of a web page or return a mistakenly purchased app to Google Play. But – here's the trouble – I stopped buying new software, especially by accident, for a long time, but I still prefer to read on my own, so as not to injure my inner voice once again, which is very annoyed when the text is not read by him. In general, I was satisfied and I recommend that you at least try Alice.

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