Everfriends – Virtual Assistant app you can speak to
by Paul Wilks
Aug 28, 2012 1:28 PM –
Install
Everfriends is a virtual assistant application that aims to inject fun and humour- as well as usefulness. You get a visual animation of a secretarial-style woman, plus a number of features that can be additionally downloaded and used. These include weather reports, news, music playing, alarm clock, play games and more. Some app features are great, others not so much. Let me explain why…
Price: Free plus in-app purchases
Tested on: HTC One X
Content Rating: Everyone
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- Does some things really well; plays games, reads news and tells you the weather!
- Great animations!
- Nice user interface!
- Different characters to interact with!
Cons
- Overly needy- posts notifications several times every day if you don’t use the app.
- Frequently requests money (i.e. in-app purchases for additional features).
- Woman animation, male voice! (You can change voices, but only via in-app purchases).
- Choice of outfits for the female characters consists either the supplied business suit or tight dresses and underwear.
- Inappropriate use of bad and discriminatory language.
- Often poor level of language comprehension.
Features:
Everfriends seemingly wants to be a friendly virtual assistant, a Siri, a Google Now or a Vlingo, albeit with a nicely animated avatar to interact with. Now, it does a lot of really cool things that other services do not offer; it plays games with you such as Hangman. It will read out news stories or report the weather to you. However, while these are smart and often well executed in the impressive user interface, the app has a number of problems users regularly have to face.
By far the most annoying is the notifications. Leave Everfriend alone for a while and you’ll begin to notification after notification telling you she wants to talk, or she wants to tell you something. What sucks is that you can’t turn this off. This means you’re perpetually clearing Everfriend notifications from your status bar. Not fun. 
And when I say frequent, while it’s sporadic, I often got three or four notifications in just 15 minutes.
While there are a number of functions, as described above, that the app can usually perform perfectly well- there are a number which forces her to request ‘teaching’. This, bluff aside, means you have to pay for her to learn how to do things, via in-app purchases. The in-app purchases keep coming with requests for new outfits and new voices. Outfits, for the main female character anyway, consist of either a business suit or one of a tight evening dress, some pyjamas or underwear. That’s it, a choice which basically objectifies and needlessly sexualizes the app at the same time as patronising the user. And before you think looking at an animation in underwear that you’ve just paid actual money for is a cool idea (seriously??), remember she still has a man’s voice.
Then there’s the voice recognition and answers. I put the app through the same set of questions I had put Evi through a number of weeks ago. It misunderstood many, got none right (Evi got 7) and managed to get in another request for more training (which you have to pay for). Most surprisingly was the inappropriate use of language. Now, the app is signified ‘Low Maturity’ but it used words completely inappropriate for the question I asked and totally out of the blue. Additionally, if it gets something wrong, or doesn’t understand a question, I’ve noticed it puts it down to being ‘blonde’. ‘Blonde’, as an excuse for getting something wrong. Seriously? This is 2012 isn’t it? Or have I somehow woken up in 1988, in a seedy bar only to find myself listening to a rubbish stand up comedian?
Watch on Mobile
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Everfriends – Will get news from your social networks.
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Everfriends – One thing the app does well is play basic games
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Everfriends – Hangman, or ‘gallows’ as it’s called in the app
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Everfriends – Another thing the app can do is perform as an alarm clock
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Everfriends – Those eyes!
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Everfriends – Just do it!
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Everfriends – Mary, although that becomes something else later on
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Everfriends – ‘By the way’, in other words another request for money
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Everfriends – This leads to another money request
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Everfriends – Another money request
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Everfriends – Alternative characters
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Everfriends – 9.00, Masha wants to talk
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Everfriends – 9.04, she wants to talk again. You can’t turn this off
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Everfriends – 9.15, she now wants to tell you the weather
Usefulness:
The app does a few things well, like play games, read news and act as an alarm clock. These automated features are usually well performed, but I’m not sure they wouldn’t even replace the normal way your use your device for those functions. Simple searches seem to be hugely problematic, meaning the app is hard work to use and requires far more patience than you’ll have. It will honestly be easier to perform a voice search or type it the old fashion way.
Ease of Use:
The icons required to make the actions work are straightforward enough, but so few things work the way you want them to, it quickly feels unintuitive and awkward.
Frequently Used:
You’ll use it for a few minutes, get over the novelty and then rarely use it again. If you use it beyond this you must have the patience of a saint.
Interface:
All the problems aside now, the interface is really good. Richly animated and full of animation and detail, it’s great. Which is why it is such a shame the rest of the app is so terrible.
Tags:
Android App,
Android Apps,
AndroidTapp.com App Review,
Everfriends,
Evi,
Google Now,
Virtual Assistant,
Vlingo,
Voice Assistant
Categorised in: Lifestyle
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