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Since the arrival of the iPhone 4S, users of the humble iPhone 4 have been hoping for a chance to get Siri. While they can unofficially, they never will from Apple. Here’s why.
The iPhone 4S uses Apple’s A5 processor. It’s bit of a brute: not only is it powerful enough to feature in the iPad 2, it also has some weighty audio processing hardware baked into it. In fact, it is home to Audience’s “EarSmart” technology. Essentially, that uses a digital signal processor to remove background noise and secondary voices so phone calls sound better, and it’s all built in to the A5 processor.
If you’ve never heard of Audience, don’t sweat it: they’re a start-up, but they power Apple’s noise-reduction circuity. Audience did, however, recently file its IPO (it didn’t get as much press as another filing, oddly). As part of that, the company revealed that its iPhone 4-era technology only works well when the phone is held near the speaker’s mouth. The noise-reduction technology built into the iPhone 4S, however, is far better. It can cope with what Audience call far-field speech.
That is, in a nutshell, why Siri only officially features on the 4S. It’s an app designed to be used from a distance: while the phone sits on your desk, as you’re holding the handset to view a search result, or (perhaps less safely) while you’re driving. The iPhone 4′s audio processing abilities just aren’t up to that task.
So, while hacks exist to install Siri on your jailbroken handset, or even legally, the plain, simple truth is that it won’t work very well. Still, not to worry: it’s not like Siri’s that good anyway. [Securities and Exchange Commission viaCNET]
Siri is a total joke anyway. I wouldn’t want it on my iPhone.
Yeah, such a joke that google are shitting themselves as it is a breakthrough piece of technology.
We’ve not seen 10% of what it will be capable of and google are right to be fearful of it.
Sorry, but I must disagree. Google voice actions already does most of what Siri does, except the cute canned responses. It does it better and in more languages. Google is also working on Majel which will allegedly show Siri up for the software toy it is. Siri will no, doubt get better, have more services and abilities but Google are in no way “shitting themselves”.
Yet another iUser who thinks what he has in his hands is unique. If you took a moment to raise your eyes and look around, you’d see that Siri has been around in other forms for years; all Apple did was add a gimmicky talk-back. Google voice actions aside, Orange had Wildfire THIRTEEN years ago.
Sounds like the noise cancelling 2nd Mic that’s fitted to many Xperia models like the Arc S.
ORLY? The iPhone 4 already has a second microphone and already does this. What’s different is proper hardware noise suppression. Nice troll in’ bro.
The reason Siri will never appear on the 4 is because Apple wants you to buy a 4S (a perfectly reasonable business strategy). And that. Is. It.
I’m rather amused you think the reason is because it won’t work very well on the older phone; it doesn’t work very well on the new one.
By the way, this article reminds me of two stories which appeared on Giz saying 1) why the iPhone will never have a bigger screen and 2) why the iPhone doesn’t need more RAM – both published within 48 hours of the Giz-rumoured (about three times a day for several months) new iPhone with a ….. bigger screen and more RAM ….. never materialised.
Maybe Seri wont make it onto the iphone 4 because Tim Cook is on £100,000 an hour (I have the maths) and can’t understand why people wont just buy the new model?
Errm, of course it could be on the older devices it was available before it became the 4S only selling point.
http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/04/the-original-siri-app-gets-pulled-from-the-app-store-servers-killed/
You could say they made it better with the new hardware but if Apple wanted to they could have left it backwards compatible, they just didn’t.
To say it will never be official because of the hardware suggests Apple are incapable of writing apps taking advantage of hardware features where they are available which is obviously not true.