why does siri fail with 'hang on' so often when phone is close

[madeirabhoy]

didn't notice it so much before as I rarely used siri on my watch, but realizing that its less annoying to press the button on my watch before issuing a command to turn on or off my lights, or set a timer when cooking, than it is to say okay google and hope to catch googles attention.

but maybe 70% of the time siri is quick as lightning, and 30% of the time she tells me to hang on....and I wait...and sometimes after a minute she gets there and sometimes she never does. and my phone is generally in the same room at the time, and within wifi signal.

 

[austinguy23]

Yep, the failure is high enough that I don’t even bother using it the majority of the time.

 

[Solver]

didn't notice it so much before as I rarely used siri on my watch, but realizing that its less annoying to press the button on my watch before issuing a command to turn on or off my lights, or set a timer when cooking, than it is to say okay google and hope to catch googles attention.

but maybe 70% of the time siri is quick as lightning, and 30% of the time she tells me to hang on....and I wait...and sometimes after a minute she gets there and sometimes she never does. and my phone is generally in the same room at the time, and within wifi signal.

Are you on Low Power Mode? If not, I suspect that it’s a power management issue. Having circuitry on all the time takes energy. Energy drains the battery. iPhone is selectively powering up and powering down circuitry all the time. If Apple would allow the user to have more control of the power management, that could fix many these kinds of problems, at the expense of less battery time.

 

[Newtons Apple]

I do not think I have ever heard Siri tell me to wait before. I use it all the time.

 

[tromboneaholic]

I've noticed Siri response time is much better on Series 4 paired to my iPhone X that she was on Series 1. Maybe it's a combination of improved performance on the watch and the fact they finally both use Bluetooth 5.0?

 

[madeirabhoy]

Are you on Low Power Mode? If not, I suspect that it’s a power management issue. Having circuitry on all the time takes energy. Energy drains the battery. iPhone is selectively powering up and powering down circuitry all the time. If Apple would allow the user to have more control of the power management, that could fix many these kinds of problems, at the expense of less battery time.

not on low power mode, and when it happens it takes that long (if it ever comes up) to come up that I think its more a disconnection from the phone or from the wifi.

 

[tromboneaholic]

not on low power mode, and when it happens it takes that long (if it ever comes up) to come up that I think its more a disconnection from the phone or from the wifi.

The watch and the phone should be communicating with each other over bluetooth when they are near, but the phone will usually need wifi or cellular to execute Siri commands.

 

[Knight3]

I had the same issue with my Series 2. Siri would struggle to get even the most basic queries about weather.
With Series 4 though, it rarely fails. It almost always gets the answers and also instantly. I’m guessing it has to do with the W2 and W3 chips in Series 3 and 4 as opposed to older wireless chips.

 

[user1234]

The watch and the phone should be communicating with each other over bluetooth when they are near, but the phone will usually need wifi or cellular to execute Siri commands.

I just tried Siri with WiFi turned off by my S4 GPS and it worked fine. It definitely works over Bluetooth. Maybe it needs BT 5?

 

[madeirabhoy]

The watch and the phone should be communicating with each other over bluetooth when they are near, but the phone will usually need wifi or cellular to execute Siri commands.

wifi is 1gb fibre with decent signal all over, mobile is iPhone XS with full signal, watch is S3

 

[mavis]

It fails for me all the time, both at home and when I'm out. AW4 (with LTE), iPhone X, and 100Mbps internet at home (with 802.11ac Orbi, both 2.4GHz and 5GHz, which the AW is connected to) ... usually if I cancel it and then immediately re-try, it works. Extremely annoying.

 

[bogie66]

I have an Apple Watch 3 Non-LTE paired with iPhone Xs Max, Siri is definitely worse on the watch since the Watch OS 5 update, I've tried everything to fix it, but I'm just giving up at this point, Siri almost never completes an action. Hopefully a future update fixes it.

 

[Azathoth123]

I’ve seen ‘hang on’ once or twice but it’s always been when I inadvertently activated Siri via the watch. Not sure what’s going on.

 

[Ghost31]

For what it’s worth, I feel ya man. I could have my phone near me and the best signal and it’ll just say “hang on” and I’ll wait and it times out and says “no Siri connection”.

Honestly I don’t think it has much to do with signal. I think it’s Siri and how much capacity she has to ha doe requests by region. Just because there’s no other explanation for it.

A good chunk of the time she’s absolutely worthless. Others she’ll answer instantly.

The Siri we are all using is basically an unimproved Siri from 5 years ago. Every time I use it I’m shocked again that she hasn’t gotten any better

 

[madeirabhoy]

For what it’s worth, I feel ya man. I could have my phone near me and the best signal and it’ll just say “hang on” and I’ll wait and it times out and says “no Siri connection”.

Honestly I don’t think it has much to do with signal. I think it’s Siri and how much capacity she has to ha doe requests by region. Just because there’s no other explanation for it.

A good chunk of the time she’s absolutely worthless. Others she’ll answer instantly.

The Siri we are all using is basically an unimproved Siri from 5 years ago. Every time I use it I’m shocked again that she hasn’t gotten any better

most of the time it fails im saying the same one of two things:

'hey siri time x minutes'
'hey siri set sofa' (turns on two lights in the lounge through Philips hue.

 

[hotsauce]

Apple’s saving grace is that it’s just simply works. What sets Apple apart now?