Siri is not working AT ALL on new iphone 4s. Anyone else having trouble?

@philfromarvada

The connection issue for Siri has nothing to do with your cellular connectivity. If you can browse to any web page in a reasonable length of time, you should be able to use Siri, since all your phone is doing is sending over data representing your voice commands over to Apple's servers (this data is small in size). Also you don't need to force your phone to use EDGE. EDGE is an older technology that was basically a stop-gap measure to improve data speeds before 3G technologies came around. Furthermore, if you are in a big city you might have HSPA+ coverage from ATT, which the iPhone 4S supports, and that would be even faster than 3G.

As for your Bluetooth connectivity issues - that one is pretty complicated because it involves multiple vendors. The bluetooth timeout issue is likely on the GM-side because they probably designed their phone-integration's voice feature to expect only a single command and not a back-and-forth conversation. If they fix that timeout issue, then they would likely issue a firmware update which would likely require you to take your car to a dealer to get the update. This is all speculation of course, but I'd start by engaging CS on BOTH Apple and GM's side, since surely a lot of 4S users are finding out they can't use Siri with their car's phone integration features, and the more they hear about it, the more likely it is to get addressed.

Thanks. I don't have 3G (strong 3G) at my house or certain areas of town and with the 4, I could get strong EDGE (including data) just about everywhere. Not sure if I can get HSPA+ in the Denver Metro yet. Great suggestion with Customer Service on both sides. I'll start there.

Thanks.

If you read the post I stated the definition came from wikipedia so your point is? The fact remains Siri is in BETA, as with all/most BETA releases there will be problems/issues.

Phil,

Here you go.

http://www.apple.com/support/iphone/contact/

Felix - did you actually read my post? Your replies have all basically repeated the same excuse over and over, that Siri is in Beta. I'm pretty certain you don't work in the tech industry, since it is pretty obvious to those who do that the bar for Beta software is not low enough to excuse all types of failures. Major software defects should and usually do block Beta releases. Customer-impacting service issues (such as lack of server capacity or the service being down) are normally addressed within minutes or hours, not days.

You clearly also are not commenting on other points people have brought up repeatedly:

- Siri is not being marketed as a Beta feature at all

- Lack of communication from Apple concerning this issue

Judging by your profile and the products you own, I see that you are a long-time Apple customer. I understand that you want to defend the company and products that you've stood by for a long time. However, dismissing the very real problem that customers are facing after having spent a significant amount of money is not constructive at all. It is in YOUR interest to see this problem fixed and to demand more from Apple in this regard.

ak,

From Apple's website:

Siri is currently in beta and we’ll continue to improve it over time.

so yes it is being marketed as BETA one more example:

http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/siri.html

You can clearly see the banner BETA right after the word SIri.

These are not excuses they are facts or do you know the difference?

Just because you have had problems does not mean EVERYONE does, as I said in prior posts, my wifes

iPhone never has had a problem, mine has, but after the first few days no problems since, remember this is a user forum, most post asking for help to problems. SInce this is a BETA release it will have problems/issues, and people on this forum should know it.

I have been searching all over the web and sites. My wife and daughter got new 4s phones. The 32gb version of Siri works fine, but my daughter's version does not work at all. I have tried the disable, reboot, re-enable,...nothing. I tried the airplane mode for 20 sec and disable Siri for 20 sec,...nothing. Reset network settings,...nothing.

They are on the same network, so the theory of apple servers doesn't hold here.

Apple needs to weigh in here, as we bought these phones for this feature and it isn't baked here. If anyone has any info on how to fix this, you'll make a young girl very happy.

GatorMan

Mine started not working last night, and I just noticed that its still not working today. I could care less about Siri (althought I am starting to like the reminders) but I am hooked on the voice to text.

So I called Apple support and they say it's working for them. Apparently, there's no system status for them to look on (example, say my account is listed on server siri0sj191.apple.com or something and my particular server is down) so they have no idea why it's not working.

Stuff breaking with no explination I thought was mostly in the realm of Android - since this is in beta I'll give it the benefit of the doubt but I was looking for confrimation if it was on my end or not. I guess I'll just try again tomorrow.

I am curious if you have tried using Dragon Dictation. It is a free download from the App store. I too could not get Siri to work no matter what incantation of reboots I tried. However, after using Dragon for a couple of sentences, Siri started to work again. I am only speculating that perhaps since they use similar software under the covers that Dragon Dictation is resetting something that is fixing the issue. It worked for me, but I only have only needed to do it once so that isn't really statistically significant. You might give it a try since nothing else has worked :-)

Heres my solution, i went to settings then location services turned it off for siri and turned it back on. then i went to general then network and turned of celluar data then turned it back on. it worked for me. what im guessing is it was connected to a bad server so i turned location off the on and it found a different one. hope this helps!

-J

Aha! I tried like you said and it didnt work, but what I ended up doing was disabling Siri location data, then turning off Siri, then turning off celluar data, and then rebooting the phone. Then I did the reverse and it worked.

Nice suggestion jreid1295

Almost all of the "action" takes place on Apple's servers.

When it says it cannot connect to the network, that is what it is referring to.... Not what we usually think of as "the network", namely 3G or WiFi.

If you ask it a question, the software on the IPhone just recognizes the speech, and passes the question up to the Apple server which then tries to figure out the answer.... Possible exceptions to that may be looking at your Contacts file to get a phone# or email, but the Apple server is where all the "artificial intelligence" resides.

If the server is overwhelmed at any given moment, your IPhone and your Siri question may not get through and then you will get the "cannot connect to the network" message.

Also, Siri is in beta, so I assume that from time to time, they make a change in the software and have to re-boot their software to implement it, so it may be down for that also.

Maybe part of the problem is being caused by all the silly question we are all asking Siri. It fun but it is definately gumming up the network. The first night I showedy husband what Siri can di, he spent the next two hours asking her silly non productive questions. I reset my phone yesterday and it has worked when I needed it ever since, but I also have tried refrained from asking non productive questions. Just a thought, though I do mess the answers.

I've been getting the "Sorry, I couldn't connect to the network" response all day. I've rebooted this, reset that, turned location services on and off, every magic fix people suggest to try and get it onto a working server. Nothing has helped. Siri is still dead for me, and has been for at least 11 hours now.

Figured out the Bluetooth thing. Just say the name of contact and then which number. For example, "Call Phil, mobile".