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Siri, why can't you help me? Tip to get more crazy answers

Summary: Siri is a pretty amazing AI service on the new iPhone 4S, but remember it is in beta and not yet perfect. You may lose your connection to the service so here is a tip to reconnect.

Matthew Miller

By for Smartphones and Cell Phones |

There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of posts on the Internet this weekend about all the crazy things people are asking Siri on their new iPhone 4S. I am loving my new iPhone 4S and doing all kinds of testing on it, including unlocking it for international SIM card usage, but this morning Siri stopped answering my questions. Now, it may be that she is just tired of answering my stupid questions, but it seems to be a network/application issue.

I made sure I had both a WiFi and strong Verizon signal so I could rule out network connectivity. Siri requires a network connection to work, but I ruled that out. I then thought that maybe the Apple Siri network was down, but there were no reports of that on Twitter. I then found this website tip and after performing the steps below Siri is back answering my questions in a nice Australian female voice:

  • Click on Settings>General and then slide the toggle to Off with a confirmation to Disable
  • Reboot your iPhone 4S
  • Now again Enable Siri back in Settings>General
  • Try it out again and you should be back in business

I am not sure why Siri "lost" the connection to the service and will keep an eye on how often this happens. BTW, you can choose from these four language for Siri:

  • English (Australia): Female voice
  • English (United Kingdom): Male voice
  • English (United States): Female voice you have seen in most all the videos
  • French: Male voice where you need to speak French and then see and hear your response is in French.
  • German: Female voice where you need to speak German and then see and hear your response is in German.

I started out with the English (US) voice, but prefer the Australian female voice myself. What voice/language do you have Siri set to?

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17 comments
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  • Sounds like I'm smart to wait

    I'll wait until iPhone 5 when Apple has fixed these problems. Siri simply isn't ready for prime time. It will be in a year.
    toddybottom
    Reply Vote

    • It amazes me...

      @toddybottom
      Don't put in 4G - too battery impactive
      Don't put in a bigger screen - why! I don't know!
      Put in SIRI even though it's in beta

      It's like they have a Hydra running the project.
      In / Out - decides on which head you ask....
      rhonin
      Reply Vote

  • Oh, and Siri has been installed on iPhone 4

    And big surprise, the performance is just fine. Of course, Apple has blocked it from communicating with the servers but this proves absolutely that Siri is exclusive to the iPhone 4S in order to increase iPhone 4S sales since Apple knows that iPhone 4S is only a small incremental update to iPhone 4. All those who said Siri wasn't released for iPhone 4 due to performance issues were lying to us.
    toddybottom
    Reply Vote

    • RE: Siri, why can't you help me? Tip to get more crazy answers

      @toddybottom [i]And big surprise, the performance is just fine. Of course, Apple has blocked it from communicating with the servers but this proves absolutely that Siri is exclusive to the iPhone 4S in order to increase iPhone 4S sales since Apple knows that iPhone 4S is only a small incremental update to iPhone 4. All those who said Siri wasn't released for iPhone 4 due to performance issues were lying to us.[/i]

      That's okay, it will be available via the jb community soon..... :)
      rhonin
      Reply Vote

  • RE: Siri, why can't you help me? Tip to get more crazy answers

    So who wouldn't prefer an Australian female voice? Onya mate!
    enzos2
    Reply Vote

    • More Options

      @enzos2
      Are always nice. Unfortunately it gets to be tiring after a while....
      rhonin
      Reply Vote

  • RE: Siri, why can't you help me? Tip to get more crazy answers

    We set that to UK English Female voice. We liked both UK and Australia female voice over US Female voice somehow.


    That is a nice tip. My kids and I were playing on white iPhone 4S, and Siri responded crazy things a good number of times. I can understand my accent is slightly heavy so it could messup, but as per my knowledge it shouldn't because my WP7 is not messing up and 99% of the time it is right on. But here Siri did a lot of funny things. One of them is send text to my other number just saying "how are you", but it tried to send "Goof yourself". And a lot of times just said had trouble with connecting to internet. My kids accent and english are excellent and fluent and it still threw a lot of nonsese when they were playing with it.

    You are right it is still in beta, and definitely has a lot of room for improvement. But for a beta, it is already doing a lot better.
    Ram U
    Reply Vote

  • Didn't work for me after following the steps

    I'd love to show of Siri except that it only works one in twenty attempts. Perhaps some day.
    bsvee
    Reply Vote

  • RE: Siri, why can't you help me? Tip to get more crazy answers

    My WP7 Mango phone has no trouble with voice recognition, except when there's a noisy background and/or I'm too far from the mic.<br><br>Make sure you are giving Siri the best chance to understand your voice my minimising background noise and are close to the audio pickup. While I don't find the female US voice on my phone offensive, it would be nice to change it to Aus ;-)
    tonymcs@...
    Reply Vote

  • But if they didn't...

    If they didn't stick in a non-finished Siri, even Apple cultists would have a hard time justifying this buy.
    It's not below Apple to throw in an unfinished piece of software to boost potentially cold sales.
    Naryan
    Reply Vote

    • RE: Siri, why can't you help me? Tip to get more crazy answers

      @Naryan It's actually a big hardware boost over the 4 just as the 3GS was over the 3G.
      non-biased
      Reply Vote

  • RE: Siri, why can't you help me? Tip to get more crazy answers

    I'm getting can't connect to network errors 90% of the time I have tried to use Siri since getting my phone Friday night. Showed one guy at work this morning just fine, then an hour later tried showing somone else and got the error. Just tried now and it works.

    In reading Apple sold 4million phones... I'm guessing with everyone hitting the servers at the same time, they can't handle the load and thus aren't replying back to our phones.
    acbelle
    Reply Vote

  • Siri works quite well for me

    I got the iPhone 4S friday morning. For a beta I find that Sire works quite well. I use it to find local restaurants, shops, the post office quite nicely. It is surprisingly good at pulling up things like atomic weights and atomic numbers which is helpful as I'm writing reports.

    I have seen it stop working off and on. The posters fix might work. It might be that if you just wait five minutes it will work again. I'm not sure if there is a bottle neck or maybe it goes offline temporarily as Apple installs a server update based on what they are seeing.

    It does seem to stumble a bit on arcane questions. Ask it about x-ray emission energies and it stumbles.

    Asking Siri funny questions is loads of fun.

    Beam me up!
    Siri: Ok, stand still.
    neutrino23
    Reply Vote

  • RE: Siri, why can't you help me? Tip to get more crazy answers

    So wait....is Siri *NOT* a local application that resides on the iPhone its self? This makes it seem more like the BlackBerry method of voice recognition than the Microsoft version. I've been using voice recognition for my WinMo phone for years. It works with everything and is rather accurate. Plus, I don't have to have any kind of network connectivity whatsoever!
    tech_ed@...
    Reply Vote

    • RE: Siri, why can't you help me? Tip to get more crazy answers

      @tech_ed@... Simple voice recognition has been available on the iPhone through local third party apps for years as well, Siri takes it further.
      non-biased
      Reply Vote

  • RE: Siri, why can't you help me? Tip to get more crazy answers

    Best crazy questions answers
    Siri Locate the G Spot
    http://www.siricrazy.com/siri-funny/siri-locates-the-g-spot
    jayram12
    Reply Vote

  • RE: Siri, why can't you help me? Tip to get more crazy answers

    My fav one is siri where is the G spot?
    ttp://www.siricrazy.com/siri-funny/siri-locates-the-g-spot
    jayram12
    Reply Vote
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