iOS device users should upgrade to iOS 6 to use Siri. Why is it required? Can’t you use various tweaks and stay on iOS 5? Actually, Siri upgrades to iOS 6 is more important for sports fans, so if you wish to get all the news about your favorite teams, scores, etc. upgrade iOS using Siri, your smart iPhone assistant.

I don’t know if you are truly using Siri to help you search for various things via Safari browser, launch apps and games, etc. But from now on if you want to ask your assistant for help with sports updates, you need to first read our Siri update news in iOS 6.

The sad news with untethered iOS 6 jailbreak being not released makes a lot of iPhone and iPad users unhappy, as there are a lot of applications and games exclusive to this firmware version, and Apple make it very complicated for hackers to find the key to the operating system’s jailbreaking utility creation. Thus a lot of people don’t update their firmware and prefer to stay on the previous version that can be jailbroken.

This firmware boasts some new features, including over the air update messages. And you can deal with many of the annoyances using tweaks. However, this is one issue that can’t be solved until you choose to update to iOS 6 wit Siri.

Sports Fans Need iOS 6

If you are a fan of sports, you are unable to use Siri in order to learn everything about the superbowl, for example. One iPhone user tried to ask assistant for help and you’ll be surprised to know what the answer was, “If you update to the latest version of iOS, I’ll be able to help you with that.”

Only iOS 6 users are able to get sports information from different sports leagues using Siri, otherwise your assistant will refuse to do sports searches on your behalf.

Unfortunately, Google Maps for iOS can not use the advantages of regular map service, including integration into interface of the operating system. For example, Apple maps are closely related to Siri, making it easier, in some cases, the interaction with the service. However to use the new map service from Google like directions you can and using Siri.

Although Siri will always work with the native iOS 6 Apple maps by default. However to switch attention to Google Maps technology is very simple: just add to the route just two words – “via transit”.

By the way, according to some analysts, the Google Maps application can be removed from the App Store. If Apple believes that its proprietary mapping service is better and it will be good reasons, in the future at some point it may decide not to allow publication of updates to Google Maps. Apple already has a similar experience: the company has rejected the publication of its third-party software product on the grounds that they duplicate the functionality of its own pre-installed applications.

However, the likelihood of such a scenario is unlikely right now. In addition, not all users will download iOS 6 Google Maps and use Siri for directions, but all would have maps on their Apple smartphones and tablets in any case.

Also if you have problem with links opening I can help you with that as well. Just use the link to find out how to make Google maps as default iOS 6 / 6.0.1 Maps.

Few months ago I showed you how to install SiriPort on iOS 5.1.1 A4 devices and now update for SiriPort 6 (Original) was released together with iOS 6 release and you can use it to install Siri on iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPod Touch 4G and 3G after jailbreak. After installing you will get not only Siri GUI, but also your device will be connecting to Apple servers every time you ask something Siri. SiriPort package is free and you can download it from Cydia sources.

SiriPort Supported Devices

• iPhone 4 (GSM / CDMA)
• iPhone 3GS
• iPod touch 4G, 3G

How to Install Siri on iOS 6 iPhone 4, 3GS and iPod touch

Step 1: As you may guess first you need to jailbreak your device. To do this just use the link to jailbreak iOS 6 tethered using latest version of Redsn0w 0.9.13dev4. After jailbreak you need to install Cydia because we need this alternative store to download SiriPort packages.

Step 2: Launch Cydia, go to Manage => Sources => Edit => Add the following repository:

http://repo.siriport.ru

Step 3: Install SiriPort (Original) 6.

Step 4: Now you should go to Settings, find SiriPort.Ru Original and click on it to Install Certificate.

Step 5: You need to install the certificate page, so click Install Certificate and then confirm the installation.

Step 6: Reboot your iOS device but remember that you have tethered jailbreak so you need to Boot tethered your iPhone using Redsn0w option.

Step 7: After you boot your device tethered go to Settings => General => Siri voice assistant and turn it on. Now press Home button to activate Siri and say “Hi”. If you hear the answer – everything is fine and you can use this Apple voice assistant! Otherwise close Siri, wait 1-4 minutes and then run Siri again.

Step 8: If it doesn’t work repeat the Step 7 until the activation of Siri. I couldn’t use Siri on iOS 6 for 2 days before it became active.

That’s it. Now you know how to install Siri on iOS 6 thanks to SiriPort for iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch 3G, 4G. Use comment section below if there will be any questions and I’ll try to help you because I installed Siri on iOS 6 iPhone 4 and know how it works.

Unfortunately, Siri patent application describes only the general mechanism of the program, so no interesting details were gathered by the journalists. One thing mentioned there was really interesting. In the application mentioned “anchor text” which Siri heard when somebody talk to her.

Documents which were filed by the Apple specialists, refers to the development of alternative “anchors” or using by the programming assistant special systems like Wolfram | Alpha, knowledge bases and a set of computational algorithms that make possible translation of questions in a format that is understood by computers. With their help the Siri application can understand most of what people want from her.

After receiving the above mentioned Siri patent Apple executives can sleep quietly. From that time the “intelligent Automated Assistant” will become Apple’s own invention. After that no court will accuse the company of patent infringement.

Interesting is that many expected from iOS 6 Siri on iPad and other non-iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 gadgets. But as we know that didn’t happen. Also it seems that Apple is trying to update its Siri app because of reduced popularity.

Many complain that Siri is dump. Apple need to come up with something and bring popularity of Siri back. But if Cupertino company prepared Siri patent application this means that Apple really has big plans for this voice assistant and I’m sure that new update will bring something really new.

And how about you, do you often use Siri? Does this voice assistant need some changes or updates.

According to the Digitimes, the organization includes companies such as Anhui USTC iFlytek, Huawei Technologies, Lenovo, China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom. Leading developer of intelligent speech recognition technology is the Chinese Anhui USTC iFlytek, China has more than 5,000 partners. It accounts for about 70% of decisions in recognition of voice information in Chinese.

Chinese hardware manufacturers have already begun the delivery of electronic devices with Chinese speech recognition feature, similar to Siri or other Siri alternatives. For example, Huawei has launched a smart phone that provides users with voice-control dialing, sending e-mail address, map search, locate and receive voice data.

Lenovo launched its Smart TV, and the management of the product is based on Chinese speech recognition technology. Shortly after Apple announced the release of Siri devices, many Chinese manufacturers of the “white” appliances (dishwashers, washing machines, refrigerators, food processors, etc.) began to supply “smart” products to the Chinese market, and focused customer on the functions of speech recognition.

As you know, the operating system only supports iOS 6 Mandarin and Cantonese dialects of Chinese, so Siri can not compete with products that are made competing companies from the Middle Kingdom. Also it is interesting for me how Chinese Siri alternative will recognize a lot of Chinese dialects? Because there are a lot of provinces in China and every of it has its own dialect.

It means that if you are from other province you can’t understand your compatriot from another province. That’s why Chinese people have one alphabet for all. So how they solve this problem with Chinese Siri alternative?

Promises that Nina will be the most effective technological capacity to manage the company and provide the user with the opportunity to talk with an assistant in a conventional live manner. There is the possibility of integration with applications in Nina.

The structure of the service consists of three parts: Nina Virtual Assistant Persona, the development environment and Nina Virtual Assistant Cloud, cloud service from Nuance company, which provides the helper. Today, as compare Nina with Siri, it already fully understands the American, British and Australian English versions. This year, Nuance has promised to add support for multiple languages. About the great and powerful yet heard.

Rather than force the user to wade through the menu, Siri alternative, Nina, aims as closely as possible to understand what the user says, and, therefore, to perform tasks. In this case there is no need to learn a specialized vocabulary of those expressions which the application understands.

Nina vs Siri. Watch the video introduction:

Apparently, Nuance also believes that it is time of virtual assistants voice, but they took a step further, displaying intuitive control to a higher level. Yes, and perhaps the possibility of using Nina in the third-party applications will only benefit the development.

Now Apple have a month to iOS 6 release so the Cupertino company needs to upgrade Siri to Nina like features. You may know that iOS 6 beta 4 features show that Siri will be updated. How do you think, Nina is better than Siri?

Is Siri Really Dumb?

As it turned out, Siri does not understand not only the foreign accent, but does not want to distinguish between average U.S. dialects. Of the five languages ​​(of which three are versions of English), only the U.S. gave more or less wide range of answers to questions. Others were limited to weather, online information search, notes and making calls. According to a survey in one UK site, only 40% of owners use the iPhone 4S voice assistant Siri. Curiously, only a third of them show off in front of friends or in unfamiliar company and does not see  a clear necessity in it.

Like many other controversial situations Apple found out what to sat to the users. An inscription in small font appeared on the official site. It says that Siri still is in beta-testing and is not a complete final product. Maybe a gray label description of a new iPhone 4S sported there eve before that, but it was only noticed when Apple’s lawyers drew attention to that inscription. Then who needed this pompous presentation of the iPhone 4S with Siri headed?

Again, returning to the fresh UK poll, 23.8% of those surveyed owners of iPhone 4S said they do not run Siri anymore and forgot about it a week after purchase. At the same time 21.4% still hits the wall of misunderstanding and is upset every time when their question or request is pronounced it can’t give a clear answer. To laugh at, joke and make a couple of funny screenshots? Is it really all what Siri appeared for? Is it really dumb? And can all those Siri ads (Siri ad 1, Siri ad 2) really help the product?

Only 19.3% of respondents were satisfied with Siri. But they say that using it only to facilitate their own efforts and free hands. None of them can ask Siri to read SMS-messages or look for recipes of delicious cakes, as it was applied in the first iPhone 4S commercials. And it is hardly something can now help the blind. To tell the truth, beta is a beta – all raw and unpolished. But what has always distinguished Apple from others is the release of only exceptional products to the market: from the first polished Macintosh until recent Retina MacBook Pro. But Siri? Siri, while being in the raw and unfinished form, was the only real new feature that distinguishes the iPhone 4S from iPhone 4, and without the introduction of it the new product would have been just an everyday update of last year’s smartphone.

By the way, the spring release of the new iPad has not brought Siri directly to the tablet (this feature is only available in the new firmware version). What is this? The sign of the death of emergency “embryo” of artificial intelligence or low start before launching a full-fledged assistant? Time and iOS 6 will tell.

LG Q Voice Release 2013

According to the principle of the Q Voice technology it maintains like Apple Siri or Samsung S Voice. It uses natural language processing to answer questions and give advice. For example, users can get the weather forecast and information on nearby restaurants, making a simple voice request. Siri’s advantage of that voice recognition technology is that it adapts to each user individually, by studying his preference for a long time and learning his preferences and needs.

At the current moment Q Voice Service only recognizes the commands made only in the Korean language. It works with 11 applications in the Android operating system. According to the developers, the technology is able to “hear” a female voice in a noisy crowd of men and recognize it as a command.

Right now only a 5-inch Optimus Vu smartphone is equipped with the Q Voice. The next phone supporting LG Q Voice after its release in 2013 will be the Optimus LTE II, which will receive a software update in July. Company’s strategy of implementing Q Voice differs from Samsung’s or Apple’s. If the last two companies have put the voice assistance only into the top models (Samsung Galaxy S III and iPhone 4S correspondingly), LG plans to add the assistant to the whole line of LG Optimus smartphones along with other company’s devices in the nearest future.

South Korean company has to make something really special to compete with rapidly growing market of mobile voice assistants, especially if they plan to launch the service in 2013 and not right now. What do you think about it?

In this promotional video Scorsese, the director of such hits as Taxi Driver,  GoodFellas, The Departed, and Gangs of New York  rides on the back seat of a New York taxi, holding the iPhone 4S in his hands and composes a day schedule with the help of Siri virtual assistant. Of course, the ad is pretty far from reality, as the digital assistant understands all the Scorsese’s commands and gives answers in no time. If you’d take a look on the recent Siri vs Google Search comparison you would probably see some other picture.

One more thing that wasn’t true about this ad is the Scorsese-Siri dialog is the moment when the assistant was asked about his colleague Rick location. The spot on the map appeared in a blink of an eye despite the places feature won’t arrive even in iOS 6.

By the way, Apple is not the first time, attracted to the promotion of Siri-known personalities. Earlier Apple used the appearance of such movie stars as John Malkovich, Samuel L. Jackson and Zoe Claire Deschanel. Despite the numerous claims that Siri ads aren’t what you see is what you get, the Cupertino guys continue shooting commercials where the main feature of iPhone 4S – Siri comes either from the future or from parallel universe where its performance and response times are pretty close to ideal.

Here’s the iPhone 4S Siri Ad with Martin Scorsese 

As for me this form of Siri ad marketing is not very fair to users, besides it won’t have a proper effect on those who wants to buy iPhone 4S. I pretty  much doubt that anyone of you would buy the device inspired by those ads. Every sane person will read a dozen of reviews from trusted tech blogs before buying it. Moreover, there’s not so much time left for the initial iPhone 5 release and the reports say that iPhone 4S are going down already because of people holding their money for the new model. Probably Apple wants to keep 4S share at the top level with such kind of promotion.

What are your thoughts about this commercial and Apple marketing strategy in general? Let’s talk about it in the comments under the article.

Just press the button “Play/Pause” on the phone’s right edge to gain access to the universal search, Bing Maps routes, weather, calendar, multimedia player, opening websites in the browser – all using voice commands.

At the moment the possibilities of BlackBerry’s voice assistant are far from what the Apple’s Siri or Google Voice platforms offer, but RIM still has no other choice as to catch up with competitors in they actually want to survive on this market.

Check out the BlackBerry Siri alternative in action:

As you can see on this video even the search layout and the way it functions is still very alpha. Probably the developers wanted to build all-in-one universal search but it should still have some improvements to get on one level with niche flagships and be a decent Siri alternative. The situations looks really the same for all of the other functions (come on, it couldn’t even recognize the “end a call” command) and the assistants look kinda dump at the moment. Probably we could call it “LackBerry”. Poor guy from the video.

Once again, the first smartphone running BlackBerry 10 will be presented in August of this year and will go on sale in October. The October’s launch of the new line of equipment gives the company a few weeks before New Year’s stock boom in sales, which company  puts the hopes to.