iOS 5 Siri Comes to iPhone 4, No Jailbreak Required

Jack, an Objective C developer and pixel pusher who lives by Steve Jobs’ famous motto, ‘stay hungry, stay foolish’, claims to have ported Siri to non-supported hardware, and he didn’t use a jailbreak either.

According to his tweets, Jackoplane was able to put Siri on the iPhone 4 and get it to talk to Apple’s servers for full functionality - a feat that hasn’t been achieved yet with existing Siri ports.

For those who are wondering why this is so important, Siri is an exclusive iPhone 4S feature. According to Apple, the personal assistant app requires the powerful A5 dual-core processor.

Some users have expressed quite a bit of discontent here on Softpedia following news that Apple had removed the standalone Siri app previously available for download on iTunes.

Apple is known to have bought Siri’s IP to put it directly in iOS. The company is now using it as a selling point for the iPhone 4S. Granted, the device boasts several other enhancements that make the upgrade worthwhile, but Siri undoubtedly plays a major role as well.

“Siri on iPhone 4S lets you use your voice to send messages, schedule meetings, place phone calls, and more,” says Apple (emphasis mine). “Ask Siri to do things just by talking the way you talk. Siri understands what you say, knows what you mean, and even talks back. Siri is so easy to use and does so much, you’ll keep finding more and more ways to use it.”

However, according to at least one filmed test, Siri doesn’t actually require the A5 to work on older hardware. It may experience some difficulties in computing certain instructions, though. We’ll have to wait and see.

For now, Jackoplane promises to come back with video proof of his achievements. Unfortunately, for those who can’t wait to use it, the developer says “the hardest part is still ahead.”

The developer has posted a Siri Port FAQ for those looking to track his progress.

Source