Don’t Have Siri? Try Evi

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Siri has a new competitor, and her name is Evi. Developed by True Knowledge and powered by the same Nuance-based backend as Apple’s virtual assistant, Evi is available for all iPhones in the App Store. There’s also a beta app available for Android handsets.

While Evi doesn’t have the integrated advantage that Siri wields, she is perhaps the first clone that’s just as smart, if not smarter, than Siri.

Unlike a search engine, which simply looks for matching words and shows you a list of websites, Evi understands what you want to know and gives back exactly what you’re after.

Need to know where the nearest bank is? Not a problem. Going out for dinner but can’t decide where? She can help with that too. The more you ask, the more she will learn, and thus she is improving all the time.

Not only will Evi run on non-iPhone 4S devices, but she also works outside of the U.S. and on Android. The App Store app costs $0.99 to cover the Nuance licensing fees that True Knowledge has to pay.

The only thing that Evi can’t do that Siri can is integrate with Apple’s stock iOS apps. For instance, you wouldn’t be able to set a reminder or calendar event with Evi. But that doesn’t mean you won’t be able to eventually. TechCrunch believes that Evi is actually smarter than Siri in many ways:

Install Evi on an iPhone 4S and compare it to Evi. Ask “How do I make apple pie?”. Siri is unable to provide a direct answer and so asks whether you want to search the web. Evi provides a list of recipes with web links.

Ask “Who was President when Queen Elizabeth II was born”. Siri is unable to provide an answer and suggests performing a web search. Evi determines who Queen Elizabeth II is, when she was born, the dates when she will have been a teenager and then compares this against which US presidents were in office over that time, delivering the results of both serving US presidents during those years. Not bad huh.

Like Siri, Evi claims to learn from its mistakes and your requests to provide better results. The app integrates with lots like Yelp to provide localized results as well. Let us know what you think of Evi in the comments!

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