Apple has said voice-recognition system Siri will be available in beta in English localised for US, UK and Australia, though did not confirm whether or not it will be on the iPhone 4S in the Irish market on its release date.
Siliconrepublic.com was contacted earlier this week by someone who had asked an Apple sales support team member whether or not Siri would be available on the iPhone 4S.
Apple responded, saying that as Siri was in beta, it would not be ready for full global deployment, meaning it would not be available on the iPhone 4S in Ireland on its release date. The support team member did say there was a possibility it would be supported for Ireland down the line.
We contacted an Apple spokesperson, who stated that Siri will be available in beta on the iPhone 4S in English localised for the US, UK and Australia. It will also be available in French and German.
The spokesperson did not clarify further when asked if that would mean Siri would be on the iPhone 4S in Ireland only localised for those other regions or if the feature would be absent from the device in Ireland on its release date.
While nothing is certain, there could be a chance Siri may be on the device, just not localised to Ireland. While this would be preferable to having no Siri at all, Irish natives could find some difficulty when using the feature with these different regional settings.
US-based venture capitalist MG Siegler said that when he was previewing the phone, he noticed that while Siri knew what he was saying when the iPhone 4S was set to US English, it didn’t understand him when he set it to UK English.
An Australian Gizmodo reviewer also tested how it reacted to accents. While it understood him perfectly well when set to Australia, it had some difficulties when set to US English.
9to5 Mac posted a video showing that Siri didn’t work too well with users in non-native English-speaking accents.
It seems we won’t know for certain until the iPhone 4S arrives. The iPhone 4S will be released in Ireland on 28 October.
