Engineering reportedly concludes that ‘Siri only works on iPhone 4S’

Nov 9, 2011 09:51 GMT  ·  By

Squashing the dreams of millions of iPhone owners out there, Apple has reportedly confirmed to a developer that the company has "no plans" to support Siri on old-generation hardware, after being said to have tested a special build internally.

As the story goes, Michael Steeber, founder of MSComputerVideos, had a chat with an Apple developer who submitted a bug report to Cupertino this week.

In his email, the programmer suggested that Apple consider a paid update to have Siri installed on devices older than the iPhone 4S. Message reproduced below:

Bug Title: Special Siri Build of iOS

iPhone 4 Users and iPod touch 4th generation users pay a fee of 19.99 to upgrade to a ‘special’ build of iOS 5.0.1 with Siri Final in it, (To avoid hackers hacking Siri onto non 4S devices illegally) **Many iPhone 4 Users and iPod touch 4th generation Users will pay for this special iOS build (5.0.1) which will enable Siri for a fee of $19.99 US dollars.

Apple, however, reportedly replied with a negative answer:

Engineering has provided the following feedback regarding this issue: Siri only works on iPhone 4S and we currently have no plans to support older devices.

It is unclear whether this developer was actually privy of Apple’s internal Siri testing on older-generation hardware, but it appears that such tests did occur at some point. The ever perfectionist company seems to have concluded that older iPhones and iPod touches don’t quite cut it for the personal assistant.

There is still some hope for those who don’t mind jailbreaking their device. Recent developments on hacker fronts indicate that at least the fourth-generation iPhone and iPod touch pose no hardware limitations. A public release, however, will be a tough nut to crack, as there are legal issues involved.