Microsoft’s Chief Research and Strategy Officer has recently been comparing the iPhone 4S’ Siri with the own voice-recognition capabilities of Windows Phones’ own Tellme. Tech enthusiasts have interpreted his statements as him saying their phones have had the capability to do what Siri now does even a year ago and it’s only through the strength of Apple’s marketing arm that there is such a buzz about Siri these days. Tellme, after all, has also been lauded as being a step up from previous voice recognition programs.

However, many who’ve read these statements by Mundie have also regarded it as a mere exaggeration on his part. After all, Siri isn’t merely a voice recognition tool but is a pretty much complete package for interacting with the 4S. Of course, when it comes to voice recognition, it is also far beyond what most of its competitors have out in the market. What it adds to its voice recognition capabilities, though, involves a greater capability for understanding commands in context. Although it still is in beta and is set to improve, Siri understands that the meaning of single commands can be parsed from previous commands. Siri also recognizes a lot more commands than the standard instructions that competitors like Tellme does.

When a user compared using Siri with Tellme using two phones side-by-side, the result wasn’t even close with Siri able to handle instructions that had the Windows Phone unsure of what to do. For their users, the best thing for Microsoft to do at this point is to recognize that it’s not just marketing that has people raving about Siri.

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