Cortana is awesome, she can sing, tell jokes, remind you when to leave home so you get to work on time, and has some pretty handy people-based reminders. Her witty sense of humor and naturally sounding voice leave you with the impression that you’re interacting with truly advanced artificial intelligence, but there’s one feature that Cortana just couldn’t do, until recently.
For a long time, Cortana couldn’t tell you the time. Whenever you would ask her for the time, Cortana would just launch a Bing search which would only show you your local time, but not read it out to you. Sure, typically you could just look at your Glance screen, lockscreen, status bar, or your watch to figure out the time, but on the rare occasions that you can’t do that, or are simply not bothered to, it’s nice to have the time read out to you.
Go ahead, launch Cortana and ask “What time is it?” The virtual assistant should then announce out the current time, albeit in her non-natural voice. Poor Jen Taylor, imagine all the hours it would take recording just to make a naturally sounding, basic feature come to life. Have you thanked her for lending her voice to Cortana on Windows Phone? Be nice, go say thank you.
