14 DAY TRIAL // Since Microsoft has started to talk openly about Cortana, there has been a ton of info that would have Windows Phone fans excited at the mere mention of it.
Several Microsoft officials have already started to explain how they came up with the idea of bringing Cortana to Windows Phone devices and what their plans for the intelligent personal assistant are.
The good news is that Windows Phone users will always be offered the best Cortana experience, even if the digital assistant is ported to other platforms in the future.
We’ve been reporting on where Cortana should be launched after it gets released in the United States and how Microsoft came up with the idea of naming the personal assistant Cortana.
Although Microsoft did not yet reveal when exactly it would launch Cortana besides the United States, it did confirm that the next countries to get it would be China and the UK.
Microsoft has also confirmed that it has started working on Cortana for India, but also for Canada and on a Spanish version of the personal assistant.
More recently though, Microsoft’s Marcus Ash offered more details on some of the features that might be available in Cortana in the not so distant future.
One such new feature that is not yet available in the beta version is voice activation. Something that Motorola Moto X already has, but the technology is integrated in the Xbox One as well.
According to Ash, Microsoft is now looking to implement voice activation into Cortana in a way that will prevent the feature from being enabled by mistake by users.
The culprit here is the latest Xbox One advert starring Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul, which apparently activates Xbox One consoles that are near the TV when the promo runs.
During the advert, Aaron Paul demonstrates some of the voice commands that Xbox One users can activate to do various things, like powering on the console, starting a gameplay sessions or taking some screenshots.
Well, it appears that when he uses the voice command to power on the Xbox One in the advert, it automatically triggers all the Xbox One consoles of the people that are watching that promo even if they do not want to power it on.
This is a hilarious situation, but lots of Xbox One owners usually trigger their console’s power on voice command by mistake 2-3 times per week.
Well, it looks like Microsoft has learned its lesson and will now try to integrate the voice activation technology in Cortana with more care. There’s no timeline for the release of this feature for the moment, so voice activation may be released weeks or months after Cortana is launched.