Hacker News Reader

Comment by mrweasel | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why the Google Assistant has to be thrown in. Beside me not liking the idea of Google Assistant processing my request, I don't really believe that it's a feature that many need or even request.

Of cause I'm in a non-English speaking country, so that may change the usage, but I don't know anyone who uses Google Assistant, Siri or Cortana and only two people who use Alexa, which technically isn't even available here.

View on HN

Google assistant is the reason the phone is so cheap. The same reason a smart TV is cheaper than a dumb one, and why most of those "home assistant" things are cheap. You're not paying with money, you're paying by allowing access for data harvesting.

The same phone without Google Assistant would be better, sure. But it'd also be much more expensive - if it was allowed to exist at all.

I use it regularly to search for things because it's often faster than typing, and that's on a smartphone with a swipe keyboard. Compared to T9, it must be even better.

Exactly this. T9 input is difficult for most people, but especially for the customer base of the Jio phones: a lot of the people who buy these phones are looking for content in languages they aren't necessarily fluent in, and some are even semi-literate in their native language. Being able to send a text message, make a call, or search for a popular video via voice input is a huge boon for those users.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com