Microsoft’s Cortana Arrives On Android and iOS Platforms

Microsoft has finally launched Cortana for Android and iOS. The standalone version of the “assistant” was released on Wednesday and is available for download on both Apple and Android platforms and is available in the U.S. and China at the moment.

“Cortana is your truly personal assistant—helping you get things done by letting your PC and phone work together”, the product description page reads.

Using Cortana users can set and get location and time reminders across their PC and phone; get notified and send a quick text reply from PC if a call is missed on phone (for this feature PC needs to be opted in to Cortana, and running Windows 10 version 1511 or above); track packages, flights, scores, stocks, and other important info, use Cortana’s Notebook to view, edit and manage their interests and much more.

Mashable explains that the app doesn’t connect to other Microsoft services being used on the smartphone, for example, Cortana cannot be used to send an email from Outlook on the iPhone. However, Marcus Ash, Microsoft's Group Program Manager of Cortana, said that they are considering ways to make stronger connections between apps.

"It's a bit of a learning process for us right now in terms of what can we do based on the restrictions that the platform might have in place," Ash told Mashable. "Even just building the idea that I can do something on my PC and have a continuation on my phone, we think is going to be powerful and some thing we're going to spend a bunch of time on."

The Cortana app for Android is 15MB in size and requires Android version 4.0 or above, while the iOS app is 13.2MB in size, requires iOS 8.0 or later and compatible with iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.