iPhone jailbreakers can now get a little Siri dictation

If you hate not being invited to a fun party then you’ll be interested to know that Siri dictation can be installed on non-4S iPhone devices, so long as you’re willing to jailbreak. True, it’s not the most fun part of the Siri party, but Siri dictation is a pretty snappy voice-to-text feature that some folks would like to get their hands on.

Siri is “digital assistant” software that’s officially available only on the iPhone 4S, and is best known for letting the user speak in plain language while Siri returns intelligent answers to questions or does useful tasks. The dictation is only a part of Siri’s repertoire, but it’s a feature that’s lacking on non-iPhone 4S-devices. By “jailbreaking” your phone, a hack called Siri0us allows you to employ the feature on iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS and iPod touch 4 generation gizmos.

“Jailbreaking” is a process by which you gain root access on your iPhone and bypass the restrictions or limitations imposed by Apple. People jailbreak in order to install apps that aren’t available on the Apple store, customize the user interface beyond the pre-defined limits and often (sadly) to install pirated software. There’s interesting controversy about jailbreaking among the tech community: On the one hand, Apple has implemented a lot of the features and user operability that users used to jailbreak their phones to obtain. At the same time, the jailbreaking community have nearly perfected the ability to restore your phone if something goes wrong (or Apple “bricks” your jailbroken phone with a system update), thus making the practice something of a no-risk venture.

Apple has been clear that they aren’t planning to retrofit older iOS devices with Siri. While we don’t advocate jailbreaking your phone, it’s safe to assume that, unless you do, you won’t get to enjoy Siri any time soon unless it’s got “4S” printed on the back.

Source: TIPB

Corey has been been a tech journalist with a focus on Apple since 1998 and has written for The Loop, MacHome magazine, and as games contributor for The Mac Bible, and co-hosts the iGame Radio Podcast. He works as a corporate consultant and professional musician in Ottawa, Ontario.