In the months since Windows Phone 8.1 showed up complete with its voice assistant, Android Lollipop and iOS 8 have arrived, so it's time to pit our phone-friends against each other again. Voice control is better than ever.
For the most part, as you can see, Cortana, Siri, and Google Now are mostly on even footing. Each one of them can field most of your standard voice control questions with ease, and Cortana fits right in the middle, offering a little of Siri's personality but without the lag that is more noticeable than ever in the face of ever-faster competition.
Each assistant has a few of its own little quirks though, ones that are forgivable but make the experience a little less than seamless. Ask Cortana to remind you to call John Smith tomorrow at one o'clock, and it will try to create a recurring reminder for 1 AM. Ask Google "What do I have going on on Friday" and it will just query the web instead of looking at your calendar. And Siri's more competent that ever after iOS 8, but still a tad sluggish.
There's still room for improvement across the board, and though voice control isn't the huge flagship feature that it was a few years ago, it's slowly improving. And it damn well better be if we're going to spend the future talking to our watches and speakers.
This post originally ran in April 2014. Since then, the video and text have been updated to reflect improvements and changes in iOS and Android.