Apple testing Siri on the iPhone 4

[Larry-G]

If you have an iPhone 4 or 3GS, you may well be jealous of your 4S-owning pals and their voice-activated personal assistant, Siri, but it looks like Apple could be about to bring it to older models of iPhone.

The company is testing Siri on devices other than the iPhone 4S, an Apple source told Jailbreak Nation. The source mentioned the iPhone 4, but considering hackers have had it running on an iPod Touch as well, nothing would surprise us.

Jailbreak Nation speculates we could see a software update bring the service to other models of iPhone. It also says Apple has given employees access to special software that incorporates Siri's features onto other devices, in which case we pose the question: "What's to test?"

It seems a little odd that Apple would bring Siri -- one of the few reasons to upgrade to the 4S -- to other devices, but we'll have to wait and see. As developer Steve Troughton-Smith has previously had Siri running pretty much perfectly on an iPhone 4, there seems no technical reason Apple can't do it.

Last week, Siri went down in the US, with the personal assistant replying, "Sorry, I am having trouble connecting to the network," or "Uh oh, something's wrong. Can you try again?" The service was unaffected here in Blighty -- but then again it can't look up local info or services due to Apple failing to cut deals with content partners. It's expected to fix this next year.

There are also other voice-controlled apps for the iPhone, so it's not like Siri is the only game in town. You can see it pitted against the hottest Android rival in our video, The Assistant, with a cracking cockerney accent from Lord Trenholm, too.

Would you like to see Siri brought to older models of iPhones? Let us know

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/apple-testing-siri-on-the-iphone-4-50005970/