iPhone Siri Assistant

For those iPhone owners who haven't made the jump to the iPhone 4S, you may be wondering how you can get access to the most hyped iOS 5 feature around: the Siri personal assistant. Siri may bring voice commands and interaction with your smartphone to a whole new level, but Apple has limited the feature to its latest hardware. Even though developers have ported Siri to run on the iPhone 4, the software will not communicate with Apple's servers unless it's on the iPhone 4S.

The original Siri app, formerly available on the App Store to both iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS users is now defunct. Not only has it been pulled from the store, but if you have it installed on your iPhone the software no longer works. So what is an iPhone 4 or iPhone 3GS user to do? Here are some alternatives to Siri that will get you talking to your older iPhone in no time.

Some of you may be wondering if Siri is too good to be true. After all, the technology offers to solve many of your problems via real-time speech interaction. Voice dictation of texts and search parameters is convenient, but at what price? Battery power is not the only thing sacrificed using Siri on the iPhone 4S, that is unless you check your security settings.

Turns out that Siri (much like Voice Control before its time) can access a whole range of functions without ever entering the passcode lock number that protects your iPhone. Reports have indicated that Siri is capable of changing calendar appointments, writing text messages and sending emails, all without ever entering the passcode that normally protects your iPhone 4S.