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Siri, the personal assistant extraordinaire, is one of the hallmark features of the iPhone 4S. But why oh why can she not be on the iPhone 4? She is, after all, just software. iPhone developer Steven Troughton-Smith thought the same thing and actually ported Siri over to the iPhone 4.
His first effort was less polished than the one above but this latest one (in the video above), shows Siri working just as buttery and delicious on the old iPhone 4 as on the 4S. It loads just fine, you see the complete Siri interface, actions and she can completely understand you but you can’t do anything with Siri on the iPhone 4 yet. Apple isn’t authenticating Siri commands from an iPhone 4 on its servers so all you get to stare at is the purple and silver.
Hopefully, Apple will introduce Siri to more devices because the software is amazing. They don’t have an excuse anymore, hardware-wise the iPhone 4 can clearly handle it. [9to5Mac via Engadget]
But where’s the money in letting us have it for free? I call that a good excuse…
“They don’t have an excuse anymore, hardware-wise the iPhone 4 can clearly handle it.”
Of course it can clearly handle it. It can clearly handle showing the UI. Thats all we see. Can it interpret what we’re saying? Can it handle text to speech correctly? Is it as fast as the iPhone 4S?
The answer to all of those is no – there’s no evidence whatsoever that it recognises what you say on the iP4, no evidence that it interprets it, its clearly slower than the 4S, and we haven’t heard it say anything.
Someone will port it to the iP4, it will run slowly, then people will think ‘well there’s no point in upgrading, the iP4 can clearly handle it as well as the twice as fast 4S’ not getting the full experience.
The app doesn’t interpret speech, it uploads a sound sample to Apple’s servers where it’s interpreted. Text to speech is pretty rudimentary in comparison to speech recognition, even my ZX Spectrum could make an effort at it.
The difficult part is not doing the speech to text conversion. The reason you need a powerful phone is to interpret the meaning of what you are saying, in context and based on the available information. All of this is done on the phone and requires decent hardware, which is why Apple might have decided that it is not worth releasing it for the iPhone 4 (the response times would drop too much).
For anyone who doesn’t believe that it happens on the phone: if it was done anywhere else Apple would have to continuously upload location data, contacts, texts, emails etc to their own servers and cause a privacy hell for themselves.
Well, had you actually read up on Siri and the way it works, you would have known that your couldn’t be any more wrong even if you tried. Most of the computing is done on apple’s remote servers. That was one of the big selling point for this technology, allowing to compute the information on a much faster, albeit distant, machine so that it could be used on a portable, less powerful one. The decision to only make siri available on the iPhone 4s was puerly for marketing reasons (nothing wrong with that, it’s there company after all) but don’t go around saying it needs a powerful phone to make it work.
You’re probably pretty much correct.
Let’s not forget though that without Siri, the iPhone 4S would be far less impressive. It could also just be a (very wise and lucrative) business decision.
Isn’t there another aspect to this? Apple paid serious money to buy and develop Siri (9+ figures), why would they give it away for free?
When people buy the 4S part of the cost goes towards the development of Siri, it is just like any other software that you buy. Take iLife, which comes for free with all Macs, yet you aren’t automagically eligible for an upgrade when the new version is released. Why would this be any different in the world of iOS?
“…but you can’t do anything with Siri on the iPhone 4 yet. Apple isn’t authenticating Siri commands from an iPhone 4 on its servers so all you get to stare at is the purple and silver.”
Woah, wait there a sec. This wonderful innovative amazing thing requires a data connection to work? Well, good luck here in the UK, 3G coverage is patchy at best, and on the move it’s atrocious.
I honestly thing Siri is a null feature, who wants everyone to know who you’re texting and what? Or where you’re going? The only application I can see is whilst driving, but then a data connection is difficult…
I don’t believe Apple is ignorant of this – simple maths could have told you that. The A5 is supposedly twice as powerful as the A4. Does this mean that Siri (a glorified upload/download/text to speech) requires an entire A4 chip? Don’t be silly.
Apple will have known that the iPhone 4 could run it just fine, but if it’s a selling point for a consumer considering an upgrade to a 4S, it’s a dealbreaker if it’s stock with iOS 5.