Siri requires network access for everything

skweekymagee · Nov 10, 2011

My dad got the iPhone 4S recently and he told me sometimes when he's driving and he asks Siri to call "xxxxx" it says it can't connect to the network. The problem I have with that is I don't see why Siri should require the network for internal phone functions. If that is truly the case I think that sucks. As most are well aware, on the iPhone 4 (which I have) you can voice command dial and obviously there is no network so I thought Siri would work the same way. I thought anything internal such as making phone calls, writing or reading text messages, etc would work regardless of a network and a network would only be needed for such things as directions, finding locations, checking weather, etc. Anyone else experience this and what's your feeling on it?

Skull One · Nov 10, 2011

The amount of on board RAM that would be required for the processing of even the simplest commands would require Apple to add at least 256 MB, possibly 512 MB. Which would draw a HUGE amount of power to maintain.

And that is why all the voice processing is done on their backbone not your device.

skweekymagee · Nov 11, 2011

What I don't understand about that is we have voice control for making phone calls within our contact list on the iPhone 4 without Siri so why should that function require so much more ram? When I ask to call someone on my contact list I get a voice telling me it's calling or asking which number to call if there are multiple entries so I don't see why it should be any different with Siri.

Skull One · Nov 11, 2011

skweekymagee said:
What I don't understand about that is we have voice control for making phone calls within our contact list on the iPhone 4 without Siri so why should that function require so much more ram? When I ask to call someone on my contact list I get a voice telling me it's calling or asking which number to call if there are multiple entries so I don't see why it should be any different with Siri.

There is a huge difference. Decent feature phones have always had dial by voice. They do a simple comparison analyst of the name length plus a view pronunciation markers to get "close enough". But if you try to use the word "hoobastank" with the built in voice control of Apple, it will fail every time. Siri doesn't fail with that word. Because it does a much more detailed analysis of the word.

That is the key difference.