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A5 Mystery Solved (Why Siri Won't Run On iPhone 4)
Hugh Pickens writes "Anna Leach reports that Siri support has been a contentious issue for owners of earlier iPhones, but a recent filing from Audience shows that Siri won't run on the iPhone 4 because the phone's chip can't handle it. Linley Gwennap of the Linley Group cracked one of the secrets of the new iPhone's A5 chip after working out that it packs some serious audio cleaning power not available on the iPhone 4's A4 chip. Audience has developed technology that removes most or all of the background noise when someone places a cell-phone call from a restaurant, airport, or other noisy location. The iPhone 4S integrates Audience's 'EarSmart' technology directly into the A5 processor, improving its technology to handle 'far-field speech,' which means holding the device at arm's length rather than directly in front of the mouth. Apple has also licensed the Audience technology for a 'new generation of processor IP,' which may mean that the forthcoming A6 processor will appear in the iPad 3 and iPhone 5. 'Why Apple has not simply purchased Audience is unclear. An acquisition would prevent Audience's other major customer, Samsung, from using the technology to compete with Apple,' says Gwennap. 'The company may be hedging its bets, as it could switch to Qualcomm's Fluence noise-reduction technology in the future.'"
Or at least not the whole story. It has been shown already that a jailbroken iPhone 4 can run Siri just fine.
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
I always assumed the answer was something to the effect of:
boolean siriEnabled() {
return (system.cpu.version >= 5.0);
}
Is anything else really needed? They don't want to support it on older models so you have to buy the new one. Conversely, if you really want the feature, buy the latest phone. Personally I find Siri an overhyped piece of junk. I have a 4S and I disabled it because it kept getting activated randomly and rarely understood my commands. Plus for the basic stuff like weather, I can just open the app. The anecdotal crap like "Will I need an umbrella today?" is just a dumb gimmick to me. But anyway, the fact is that the 4S is really an incremental improvement over the 4, and Siri is the one feature Apple can point to on the 4S as a differentiator, so they enforce that differentiation.
rooooar
Possibly true: Siri uses a unique feature of the iPhone 4S.
False: Siri won't run on the iPhone 4
Siri runs just fine on jailbroken a iPhone 4, and it ran just fine on an iPhone 4 Before apple removed it. Kudos to the authors for enhancing Siri to use new features of the A5 chip. Good job to the researcher who figured this out. But shame on anyone who uses this as FUD to make Apple look like they didn't cripple their own product to force people to upgrade.
I am using Spire to enable Siri on my i4 and it seems to work fine. I can use it fine while it is sitting in the dock in my truck about 4 feet from my mouth with tire, engine, and heater noise going. Not sure if it works better on a 4S but there are quite a few people using Siri on jailbroken i4's without problems.
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
Wait until they set up the iPhone to hang on the wall, with an earpiece you hold up to your head when making a call.
I drank what? -- Socrates
There is already a dozen comments or so about how the article is wrong because Siri works on a jailbroken iPhone 4. That was never the point of the article. We know that it will work because of the jailbreaks. The question is why Apple didn't allow it to work on the 4. The article suggests a hardware limitation in that while the A4 chip can run Siri it lacks the much better audio processing the A5 has to remove background noise. Design wise this means that the Siri was meant to be used at a distance instead of always next to user's mouth. Also this means the 4S should be able to handle noise better. This is speculation but a reasonable one as I can see Apple not releasing a feature for quality reasons even if people disagree it is really a valid reason for them.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Hold on, so there's a cell phone of a particular OS which appears to have different capabilities and thus can't run the same software as its immediate predecessor. And both of them are on the market at the same time, you say?
Wait, wait... there's... somewhere in my mind... I'm remembering something... there's a word there I remember from long ago... it... it starts with an 'F'... F... F... Fra... Frag... FragmentatiALL GLORY AND HONOR TO THE ALMIGHTY SAINT JOBS AS IT WAS WRITTEN AT JANUARY 1, 1904 AND SHALL BE UNTIL HIS GLORIOUS SECOND COMING! ALL GLORY TO HIS AVATAR, DOGCOW! ALL GLORY! SOSUMI! SOSUMI!
Woah, sorry, guys. Don't know what just hit me. Anyway, as I was about to say, the... um... word... it... oh, forget it. I've got to get in line for the iPad 3! I heard that before his ascension into... before his death, Jobs himself sweated over the first batch of plastic cases! Oh boy!
http://www.ifixit.com/blog/2011/05/17/unveiled-audience-powers-iphone-4s-impressive-noise-cancellation/
There's been an Audience chip included in the iPhone 4 since June 2010. When iFixit tore down the iPhone 4S and noticed the chip wasn't there, it was assumed that the chip was either integrated into the A5 design or that Apple opted to do noise-cancellation without the need of an Audience chip.
It's true that the A4 chip doesn't have an Audience subprocessor in it but it doesn't mean that the iPhone 4 doesn't have the chip included somewhere else on its motherboard. The conclusion that the iPhone 4 can't do Siri is absolute garbage. The conclusion that the iPhone 4 can't do Siri technically because of this kind audio subprocessor is not being included in the iPhone 4's design needs to have their head examined and start doing some research. This entire thing is hogwash.