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Cortana can offer birthday reminders on Android, pre-installed on Xiaomi Mi Mix in China

Microsoft has updated the Cortana digital assistant for Android, adding birthday reminders. The app is also now pre-installed on the Xiaomi Mi Mix in China.
By
November 25, 2016
Cortana-for-Android-4

Cortana, Microsoft’s entry in the crowded digital assistant market, has a new update on Android devices. Among other things, it now adds birthday reminders for the first time.

How to use Cortana for Android
Features

The new feature basically lets Cortana access a user’s Outlook Calendar and then offers up reminders if it spots an upcoming birthday. The new 1.9.12 version also lets the app connect to multiple different calendars. Finally, the app has some improvements for its location-based reminders and its meeting retrieval features, along with some unnamed bug fixes.

In related news, the bezel-less Xiaomi Mi Mix smartphone for Android now includes the Cortana app pre-installed for people who buy the device in China. At the moment, it appears the Mi Mix will be the only such phone from Xiaomi to have that honor and it may not be made available outside that country. The device will also have Microsoft’s family of Office apps pre-installed, along with Outlook Email. Microsoft previously announced a partnership with Cyanogen to offer deep integration with Cortana into the Cyanogen OS version of Android, and that was indeed added with the release of build version 12.1.