14 DAY TRIAL // Developers Steve Troughton-Smith (@stroughtonsmith) and @chpwn have achieved a full port of Siri onto non-supported hardware (at least not officially), but the hackers note that their work may never see a public release, due to legal issues.
The duo got Siri running on iPhone 4 and a fourth generation iPod touch after weeks of hard work trying to get the assistant to talk to Apple’s servers.
Previously, the hacked Siri would only run locally, but now it appears that it has been fully enabled to bypass Cupertino’s restrictions and run on non-supported devices.
The iPhone 4 and iPod touch 4G are deemed as ‘unsupported’ primarily because they both use the A4 chip. While the iPhone 4 has 512MB RAM, the iPod touch is said to have only 256MB.
It was previously thought that Siri required the A5 chip in the iPhone 4S in order to run smoothly. However, the iPad 2 has that very same chip inside its chassis yet Apple doesn’t consider its second-generation tablet PC a device worthy of Siri’s attention.
It appears that the only hurdle is the poor-performance microphone on the iPod touch 4G. On the iPhone 4, Siri runs smoothly, according to the two developers.
In fact, Troughton-Smith said that Siri on the iPhone 4 runs as fast as it does on the iPhone 4S.
The iPod touch appears to encounter problems understanding what the user says, primarily because of the aforementioned mic problem.
The iTouch requires the user to talk very loudly in order for Siri to understand the input. Otherwise, the actual Siri software runs perfectly, according to the developer duo.
Troughton-Smith says users should not get their hopes up for a public release too soon. In addition to the ongoing development - which can take weeks to complete - there may also be some legal issues regarding the distribution of the code.
Apparently there is some proprietery Apple code in this hack, which means there’s a good chance we may never see a public release of this port.
