Siri iPhone 3GS Port Follows Similar Endeavor for iPhone 4, Still Not Official

Tweet

We’ve seen Siri run on the iPhone 4, the iPod touch 4G and the iPad, so it was just a matter of time until someone developed a port for even older devices such as the iPhone 3GS.

Developer Ryan Petrich with support from Steven Troughton-Smith and chpwn – developers that recently created the first successful Siri ports for the iPhone 4 and iPod touch 4G, communication with Apple servers included – installed a fully working Siri version on the iPhone 3GS.

As you can see in the images below, Siri responds to commands just as expected. But 9to5mac reports that the microphone of the handset is “significantly worse” than the iPhone 4’s. In case there’s any ambient noise, Siri won’t work as expected and the user would have to stop the application by clicking the home button.

The video below shows us the Siri port in action on an iPhone 3GS, and everything appears to be working fine, although the clip itself is too short and only shows us one query to be relevant. Apple is reportedly internally testing Siri on the iPhone 4, although that doesn’t necessarily mean the company will let iPhone 4 users officially enjoy the personal assistant. But in case iPhone 4 owners would indeed get access to Siri, I highly doubt that iPhone 3GS would be offered the same privilege.

Apple has a way of doing things when it comes to bringing new features to old(er) devices, especially when it comes to the iPhones, and we shouldn’t act surprised that certain iDevice won’t make the cut. However, that still doesn’t explain why the iPad 2, a device that uses the same processor and amount of RAM found on the iPhone 4S, would not be offered Siri from the first day.

At the same time we’ll also have to remember that Siri on the iPhone 4S is still a beta application. Apple made sure we knew that from the start; a potential explanation for everything that may go wrong with it after launch. Speaking of betas, I will say that I can’t remember when Apple launched a beta product, and I’m looking forward to see how a finished Siri assistant looks like.