"Raise to Speak" not working on iPhone 4s

Every IPhone has this issue but here's how to get it to work every single time. Siri raise to talk requires quick movements in order to work. Hold the phone in any orientation in front of you and quickly move it up close to your ear. It will work every single time. It requires practice but keep these two things in mind: quick movement from newspaper reading level to ear and have it very close to your head. Enjoy!

Yep. Greg is correct. The "Raise to Speak" functions with the gyroscope and im pretty sure the way that it is programmed, requires a semi-fast movement in an upward direction, followed by the light-sensor being covered (ie, held against your ear). If you dont cover the light sensor, then siri will not be activated.

Also, the phone doesn't need to be unlocked. You can just push the "Home" button to activate the screen and it will still work. It will not work if the screen is black and locked.

Hopefully this helps you all out :-)

I find that I have better luck when I raise it to my ear quickly, and then wait a few seconds for the siri chime before I speak my command. I have found that if you raise it to your ear and then start speaking right away before you hear the chime it won't ever chime or listen to you - maybe it thinks you're talking to someone else since you started talking before it gave you "permission" 😀?

One more tip: when you raise it to your ear, do not touch the phone to your ear. Perhaps because it jostles the accelerometer, this seems to keep Siri from activating. Once I stopped this, it seems to work 100% of the time (albeit afer a very short time). I'm testing on a wireless too, there might be more issues with using it on the 3G network.

steve

ATT 16GB 4S, Chicago

Same issue here. Same it wasn't the proximity sensor that activated it.

I've found that it only works if I put just the earpiece up to my ear (covering the proximity sensor), but tilt the bottom of the phone away so that my face doesn't touch the screen.

It never worked for me because I had a previously unknown habit of edging my phone under my hair so I can feel the glass on my ear. This slightly slower action in getting the phone to my ear is, what I'm thinking, kept interrupting the motion gesture. Tip for people with longer hair, I guess.

Mine worked fine. Then today it stopped working on raise to talk. I finally tried reset holding home and off button down together until the apple screen came back up, now it is working again. Doesn't seem to take any special movement. Buggy. I'm sure it will get worked out eventually. The "Cannot connect right now" is I'm sure because of all the geeks like me trying out stuff like "Open the pod bay doors Hal" all at the same time. They sold 4 million this weekend after all, and you can't tell me that everyone of us didn't walk around trying every single thing we could with Siri. I'm sure that will get better. I love it and as for dictation it's the best I've tried.

I do a similar thing wnicolle by edging the phone to my ear as i don't want hit my $$$ phone into my head!

Hope Apple sort this out.

Spoke too soon. Not responding most of the time again for "Raise to Talk". I guess is just something to work out. Like pushing a button is too hard 🙂 haha.

From what i've read, this seems to be a familiar patten of it working then all of a sudden not or barely working.

Apple, listen up!

http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

Thanks! I tried what you said and it's working much more often. I can tell it's going to be something that requires a lot of practice.

I've had Siri for four days now and already can't imagine life without it - even when I had to resort to pressing the button!

My trouble is that when raise to my ear nothing happens but as I move it away it sounds the "end chime" (not the higher tone activation chime) and text shows the question "what can I help you with?" I've tried resetting, all kinds of funky arm movements even tried to strangle siri but nothing. I've even tried all the above suggestions with no luck. Put in a request for apple to call me but that wont happen till next Tues. *****!

I seem to be getting better at it. However, one thing I noted is that some of the erraticness seems connected to if you use the mute switch. It's after I use it that I have to reset to use Siri raise to talk (though still seems sketchy). Still, Siri tickles the **** out of me and I am still finding her (I just can't think of it as "it") WAAAAY more useful than the speech recognition on my old Incredible. That was truly useless.