Siri

Siri Arse Lee

| Richard

So when I first got my iPhone 4S I wrote:

“I see it really being of use to me when I’m in the car and a text message comes through: Siri can read it out and send a dictated reply. It’ll be interesting to see if that’s done through my Mazda RX-8′s Bluetooth sound system or the iPhone’s loudspeaker.”

Well there’s some good news and there’s some bad news.

The good news is that yes, it works through the car’s Bluetooth sound system, so it mutes any music and reads out the text messages.

The bad news includes:

  • “Uh-kay” being said before most things it does.
  • If you haven’t got a web connection it’ll say it can’t do anything right now, like reading something stored locally.
  • The voice recognition at anything other than walking pace is pretty poor, actually, and I’ve now started simply sending bizarre text messages in reply to people rather than spending hours arguing with Siri when it comes up with gobbledegook instead of what I actually said, thinks that I said “danger” rather than “change it” and claims not to understand danger (big, brave Siri!)  and sometimes even picks a track from my music library to play in an attempt at being ‘helpful’.
  • Won’t perform a web search because I’m in the UK and using proper English.
Close, but no cigar.
Oh and another thing: to be fair to Apple, they claim different sets of services from Siri on their US site to those on their UK site.

Apple iPhone 4S

| Richard

I decided that I wanted another phone to replace the aging Sony Ericsson W595 I use for my photography admininstration – to use as a mini iPad – and also to refresh my present iPhone 4 (and yes, I also have another iPhone 4 from my day job!).

More or less in line with the normal product evolution for the iPhone, Apple had recently released its iPhone 4S.

iPhone 4S

iPhone 4S

As you can see, the form factor’s not really changed too much: the volume controls have been shifted a little downwards but other than that, it’s more or less the same size (I’ve not got the micrometer out to check).

What has changed is the processor and it does feel much snappier, a feeling borne out by the benchmarking on CNET UK’s iPhone 4S Review.

The camera is supposed to be much improved with a few new gizmos: we’ll see.

The killer app or at least the headliner is Siri: a more intelligent voice recognition and command app. At first, it looked as though this was somehow missing and I initially thought that the way I’d set it up (see below) was to blame. It wasn’t: it just needed enabling in the phone’s settings. First impressions were good, but other than the novelty factor I won’t be using it at the office, for instance, though I see it really being of use to me when I’m in the car and a text message comes through: Siri can read it out and send a dictated reply. It’ll be interesting to see if that’s done through my Mazda RX-8′s Bluetooth sound system or the iPhone’s loudspeaker.

Setting it all up was something I thought would be a nightmare, but I followed Apple’s instructions, backing up my ‘old’ iPhone 4 and then when setting up the iPhone 4S, restored from that backup. I just needed to enter all my passwords again – good security touch that – and then sync the songs, films and photos, etc. One last step was to reorder all my Apps the way I like them and resync and I was there. A couple of hours tops.

What took longer was the download of the IOS 5.0.1 update, but that was a necessary evil. I left that downloading whilst I went out for the evening and when I got back I did a quick update and was there.

So was upgrading worth it? For me, yes: I now have the ‘old’ iPhone 4 working for my photography side and everything sync’d with the iCloud. I was running out of space on my iPhone 4 32GB and so the increased storage – I went for the 64GB version – is welcome, even though you only get around 58GB available for some reason. The feeling of a speedier interface is nice too. There’s not so much of the wow! factor I got from moving from IOS 4 to IOS 5, though, but it is a nicer phone overall.

What next? Well what can they do with the iPhone 5? It can’t get smaller or screen size will be reduced. If it’s thinner, it would surely be easier to break as it became a wafer in your pocket. Maybe they’ll just cram more features and storage and speed into it?

As for battery life, I discovered this little tip:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/oct/29/iphone-4s-battery-location-services-bug

Worth reading and acting on? We’ll see. I like the way the time zone is updated when you’re abroad, but I suspect that’s overridden anyway with your cellular provider – Vodafone seems particularly dodgy in this regard from my experience.