Dragon, a line of speech-recognition software products, debuted its beta app for Android Wednesday.
Developed by Nuance Communications, which also works with Apple on voice control, Dragon Mobile Assistant can help you send texts, make calls, set appointments and provides access to web content from more than 200 content providers, according to a release.
The Android app was inspired by Dragon Go!, Nuance's app for iOS; it performs similar functions to Siri, an intelligent voice-controlled personal assistant that works with iPhone 4S and 5.
To start the app, users say, "Hi Dragon." According to Nuance, the hands-free personal assistant responds to commands, such as:
"Tell Natalie, 'I'm on the way to the office and will grab you a Starbucks.;"
"Schedule a meeting for 2 p.m. tomorrow."
"Get directions to the New England Aquarium
"How's the weather look this week?"
Dragon Mobile Assistant is currently available in beta (English only) for free on Google Play in the U.S. It supports Android Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0) and above. Nuance says it plans to expand availability and debut new features before the end of this year.
"Nuance is investing deeply in Natural Language Understanding and conversational dialog technologies," Vlad Sejnoha, the company's chief technology officer, said in a statement.