"Portana" brings some of Microsoft's Cortana features to Android

"Portana" was a project that was unveiled at Droidcon 2015. The app is able to communicate with Microsoft's servers to create Cortana-like experience on Android.

It looks like Microsoft's intelligent personal assistant, Cortana, has somewhat made its way to Android. Although "Portana" isn't an official release, a pioneering development team has integrated some of Cortana's familiar features to Android by using Bing's search algorithms and returns.

OrangeSec Team, which is composed of Marco Bartoli and Lorenzo Santina, are the two responsible for creating "Portana". Although it is not as fully functional as the original found on Windows Phone, the app does a fairly good job of taking commands. At last week's Droidcon 2015 event in Italy, the duo demonstrated their work, which has been posted to YouTube.

The team was able to create Portana by utilizing CortanaProxy and DNS spoofing. However, there are restrictions to the app, mainly that the it must have a continous internet connection and it can only currently understand Italian.

While we probably won't see the application translated or released to the public, it's interesting to see some of Cortana's features running on an Android device. Hopefully, Microsoft will release Cortana officially for Android in the near future.

Source: YouTube via VentureBeat