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chrismarle

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 18, 2011
372
3
Canada
I just noticed that the "Hey Siri!" thing just works when the device is plugged. Kinda letdown...
 
Yeah this is really upsetting to me as it's easily one of my favorite new features!

Perhaps once it gains popularity they will alter it? Hoping so! Really loses value when relegated to plugged in status.
 
As a car owner

Not having Siri listen when its off the charger is better IMO. Now I can use my phone without touching it (which is a Godsend when driving in my city).
 
I just noticed that the "Hey Siri!" thing just works when the device is plugged. Kinda letdown...


They actually stated this in the keynote.. not a surprise at all. Im glad of the decision.. it would kill battery so fast to have siri listening 24/7
 
I see the rationale behind making it plugged-in only, but why not give us the choice?
 
Well it is launching itself when it hears "Hey Siri!" so yeah I'm pretty sure it works that way.

That's not my point. The point is it can't just "listen for a specific word", as you said. It listens to everything around it, waiting for that word to be said. How can the microphone possibly only activate when you say a certain word when it wasn't active to begin with to hear that word? Think about it.
 
Siri would record every sound around you if this wasn't the case, not to mention someone could just say "Hey Siri!" loudly and activate multiple devices around them. That would be very disruptive.
 
It seems to me that this is one of those things where the iPhone 6 will have a low power chip within the new A8 (or whatever they call it) that listens for "Hey Siri" without draining the battery, ala Moto X. All previous phones will probably be limited to plugged in only.
 
Not necessarily... Google Launcher constantly listen to "OK Google" without kill the battery life... Loving the this feature...

Doesn't this feature only work on the Moto X which has a special low-power chip to handle this?

We could expect that future iPhones would also have something similar and remove this limitation.
 
It seems to me that this is one of those things where the iPhone 6 will have a low power chip within the new A8 (or whatever they call it) that listens for "Hey Siri" without draining the battery, ala Moto X. All previous phones will probably be limited to plugged in only.
Sounds like that might be the case.
 
Yeah this is really upsetting to me as it's easily one of my favorite new features!

Perhaps once it gains popularity they will alter it? Hoping so! Really loses value when relegated to plugged in status.

Once they figure out how to implement it efficiently, they'll remove the restriction. Rare case of Apple putting the cart before the horse. Not necessarily a bad thing, as the key use is in the car and your phone is most likely plugged into your car system (they assume).
 
I was thinking about this earlier. Good thing it's only for phones that are plugged in though.

Imagine being in public and trolling the people in your surroundings by yelling "Hey Siri!" :apple:
 
Maybe in a future iPhone

The Moto X has an always on voice assistant and the way they got around battery issues was by having a lower-power processing core dedicated to processing voice and constantly listening.

This is a very similar solution to the M8 processor introduced in the iPhone 5S, so I'm guessing that there is a good chance that an always-on Siri will be a headlining feature of the iPhone 6 (with possibly an upgraded M8 processor for the task or an entirely new core).
 
At least only listening when plugged in cuts down on the situation where you're going to be in a crowded environment and someone else says "Hey, Siri - play me some music" and everyone's iPhone starts playing a song

Can you imagine at next year's WWDC if Tim gets on stage for his keynote and shouts out "Hey, Siri" Instant chaos!
 
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