iPhone 4S: Siri review

We review Siri, the voice activated virtual assistant that manages to fit into your iPhone 4S

We reviewed the iPhone 4S recently and we found it to be a great handset. But it's not entirely different, save for one particular new feature: Siri. This voice activated assistant, which is the work of a company that goes by the same name, is meant to make life even easier for its users.

The idea is you can talk to your iPhone and it will perform a variety of tasks, saving you from raising a finger. It's great in theory, but just how useful is it in practice? We find out.

'Who are you talking to, dear?'
If there's one thing guaranteed to raise concern amongst your family, friends and peers, it's talking to yourself. By extension, talking to your phone is just as bad, so bad in fact, that not even Jonny Depp could make it look cool.

There are situations when it's a feasible practice, though. For one, in your office or at home, providing you have your own office, it could be okay. Also, when driving the need to keep your hands on the wheel makes it perfectly acceptable - if a little odd for anyone who overtakes you.

Besides to aid any disabilities or when driving, we just can't see the point. You look stupid and Siri isn't accurate enough to perform lengthy tasks. Plus, the idea of a mobile phone is that it's mobile, meaning it will spend most of the day outside the home.

To dictate, or not to dictate
Assuming you still want to press on with Siri's voice control, you probably want to know how well it works. Well, all we can say is, the results vary quite dramatically. One member of our team saw great results for punchy emails, another, Siri just totally ignored.

We asked our iPhone 4S to email somebody with a few sentences of text. Up to a point, it was all going well but upon reading the message back Siri had inserted a few strange words. It also chose the wrong contact, which was a bit annoying.

Siri is supposed to adapt but we didn't see this in action. Words and sentences it struggled with kept giving it trouble, suggesting regional accents will always be a problem for it.

For quick messages like, 'Won't be home. Remember to feed the cat' it works fine but if you want to dictate a scientific document and not spend another hour picking out comedy mistakes, the technology just isn't there.

Directions
Going back to our driving argument as a valid use, Siri would be great for telling you how to get somewhere without reaching over to fumble around in a moving car. Except the direction service currently only works in the US, which makes it a whole lot less useful.

We'd love to ask it to redirect us to the nearest petrol station or read out our emails but it can't do that. In fact, it really can't do a lot because we had issues with it reading texts, too.

So to that effect, Siri is probably a lot more useful in the US but probably not a lot more so. As a compliment to those of us who spend their life on the road, it's not going to improve things one iota.

Instructions
One area where Siri is pretty good, providing you don't have a strong regional accent is when you ask it to open emails or tell you the circumference of the sun. No really, Siri will open up a web page to answer your question. It will even book your appointments for you and warn you if there's a clash - a useful extra.

Within seconds, Siri happily gave us the Wikipedia page of Steve Jobs, too. So long as you speak clearly, Siri can really impress with its ability to use the internet when answering bizarre questions.

Online and offline
Some voice technologies require a connection so that the data you wish to listen to, translate or whatever can be sent to the appropriate server. In the case of Siri, asking it to look on the web obviously requires a data connection but if you want to ring a family member or compose a message it will perform the task with no issues.

It's only a minor point but it's useful to note, as a totally connection-reliant service would be a problem for some iPhone 4S owners.

Verdict
Voice technology is certainly not new but when Apple adds it to a handset the world takes notice. However, we don't see Siri being that useful until it starts to become a companion for drivers and more accurate for dictation.

However, like with Dragon Dictation on PC, Siri can surprise with its web searching and its ability to pick the most suitable web source for a query. It can be scarily accurate, which is definitely something you could impress people with down the pub. But that's just it: it feels more like a gimmick than a useful extra.

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