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.'"

Comments

Interesting but wrong

[zonker]

Or at least not the whole story. It has been shown already that a jailbroken iPhone 4 can run Siri just fine.

Re:Interesting but wrong

[larry bagina]

Yesterday (after reading the article), I did some Siri tests with a 4S and my girlfriend's jailbroken 4. For all the tests, the phones were next to each other and I only spoke once for both of them. With no/minimal background noise, they had the same results. With the tele on in the background, the 4S was much more reliable.

Re:Interesting but wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, reading TFS, it says they "licensed a new generation of processor IP" -- but if you ask me, that sounds suspiciously like "licensed some DSP code that runs on any sufficiently-powerful DSP, but only paid for a license for their new chip (and pay royalties on the DSP code for every A5, whether it runs Siri or not)" -- cheaper than paying licensing for all manufactured iPhone 4 units (whether or not they use Siri) and provides an incentive to buy the latest. There's absolutely no reason something like that would be implemented in dedicated silicon, it just doesn't make sense. And yeah, it's possible the A4's DSP isn't powerful enough, but I have a hard time seeing how speech cleanup could be more demanding than x264 de/encoding...

Re:Interesting but wrong

[timeOday]

Interestingly, the link you posted seems to be consistent with this new explanation: "Petrich tells 9to5Mac that the port really only works when no ambient noise is present." In the cnet article they chalk this up to microphone quality, but you would see something similar if it is indeed due to noise removal instead.

Of course, noise remval is still software algorithms, so should be possible without hardware support. Then again, the same can be said for 3d gaming, and it sucks pretty bad without hardware acceleration.

Re:Interesting but wrong

[timeOday]

I am a software architect, dwelling exclusively in the ethereal realm of abstractions, trouble me not with your "physics."

Re:Interesting but wrong

[BasilBrush]

There's a difference between running and running as well as on the 4S. The demo of noise reduction is impressive.
http://www.audience.com/demos/transmit-noise-en.php
It's easy to see why with that noise reduction, Siri would be much more accurate than without it, in real scenarios.

Apple obviously wants Siri to be judged on it's best performance. They have a reputation for quality to maintain.

Mystery?

[Evro]

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.

Good article, bad summary

[MobyDisk]

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.

Re:Good article, bad summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe they wanted Siri to work really well, - even if there's background noise.

Apple's now defunct Newton was laughed at over the original version's poor handwriting recognition. Even though it improved immensely over time, lots of folks never got over that initial bad impression.

Apple hates the dreaded F-word

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

iPhone 4 has an Audience chip too

[WarpedCore]

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.