Review: Siri-like Cortana fills Windows phone gap

NEW YORK – “Yay, it’s Nick! How can I help?”

Thanks for asking, Cortana. And thanks for making the Windows phone software better, Microsoft.

With the new Cortana virtual assistant, Windows catches up with Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android in a major way. Microsoft takes some of the best parts of Apple’s and Google’s virtual assistants and adds a few useful tools of its own. The result is Cortana, named after an artificial-intelligence character in Microsoft’s “Halo” video games.

The new Windows system, Windows Phone 8.1, will come with new phones starting next month, while existing phones will be able to download it for free in the coming months. Today, Microsoft is making a preview version available to software developers. I was able to test that version over the past week.

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