iPhone 4 owners hoping to get in on the Siri voice control game are in for a disappointment because it looks like Apple doesn’t have any plans to support the voice control feature on pre-iPhone 4S phones.
Apple says no to Siri for iPhone 4
Michael Steeber said on his blog that Apple confirmed as much in response to a suggestion that Apple charge iPhone 4 owners for a special Siri upgrade. Apple’s response:
Engineering has provided the following feedback regarding this issue: Siri only works on iPhone 4S and we currently have no plans to support older devices.
That’s bad news for iPhone 4 owners that want to use voice control with their phone, although it doesn’t mean they have to buy a new iPhone just to chat with Siri. The jailbreak community has already shown how to get Siri running on older iPhones through hacks, and it’s always possible that Apple will decide at some point to bring the feature to the iPhone 4.
Apple introduced Siri as a new feature in iOS 5 for the iPhone 4S in October, giving users the ability to speak conversationally with their phone to perform tasks. Siri can perform word lookups, search contacts, schedule meetings, perform Wikipedia and Wolfram Alpha queries, compose email messages, handle voice dictation, and more.
What it can’t do, however, is run without hacks on an iPhone 4, and for now it appears that’s exactly what Apple wants.