In a small study at The Arora Report, accuracy of Apple (AAPL) Siri voice recognition trumped Google (GOOG) Android voice recognition.
The study involved reading a page of text by five different persons to Apple Siri and three android devices in a room with moderate conversational noise.
Siri showed only 96% accuracy which is less than what Apple enthusiasts claim.
Android fared even worse with only 93% accuracy.
The study was repeated with no material noise. Siri showed accuracy of 98%, Android showed accuracy of 97%.
The accuracy needs to approach 100% for voice recognition to be truly useful. The results showed that in real life, without training, voice recognition accuracy is lower than widely believed. It is widely believed that the voice recognition accuracy is at 99%.
The study is small and not scientific, therefore no quantitative conclusions should be drawn. Nonetheless, two qualitative conclusions are clear — Siri is superior to Google android voice recognition and both systems are not as accurate as widely believed.
