There’s been a big debate going on ever since Siri made her fantastic debut as to whether she would be formatted for older versions of the iPhone or not. Talk to just about anyone with iPhone 4S and it’s likely that one of the first things they’ll mention is their love for Siri and her greatness. So it’s understandable why older users would hope that she would come to their phones as well. However those dreams have been crushed, at least for now.
It all started when there was a bug report submitted to Apple with the suggestion that an upgrade – paid of course – be implemented for an optional build iOS, with Siri accompanying the upgrade. The bug report was as follows:
Bug Title: Special Siri Build of iOS
iPhone 4 Users and iPod touch 4th generation users pay a fee of 19.99 to upgrade to a ‘special’ build of iOS 5.0.1 with Siri Final in it, (To avoid hackers hacking Siri onto non 4S devices illegally) **Many iPhone 4 Users and iPod touch 4th generation Users will pay for this special iOS build (5.0.1) which will enable Siri for a fee of $19.99 US dollars
Unfortunately, though, Apple responded stating clearly that Siri is only compatible with the iPhone 4S and there are no immediate plans to change this. The reasoning behind Siri not being moved over to the older iPhone versions has to do with the fact that Siri “talks” back and forth to servers to respond to questions asked by the user. The graphics chip and dual core-processor used in the iPhone 4S is not used with the older versions, rendering them unable to support her.
That’s not to say that people haven’t figured out how to hack Siri onto older devices, because there are ways to do so, but implementing that sort of version onto your phone could void the warranty. Because Siri is such a crucial selling point for the iPhone 4S, it’s really no surprise that they want to keep her exclusive to the new phone. After all, why would you care about buying the new version of the phone if you could just upgrade the old version to mimic the new one?
Guest Post by Melanie Slaugh, a freelance writer. She writes extensively for internet service providers and also topics related to internet service providers. She can be reached at slaugh.slaugh907 @ gmail.com.