I'd say since the ios5.1 update, Siri's performance has decreased significantly. She fails to understand basic commands about 30% of the time.
I've recently asked her, "directions to <an address>" and she quickly showed me the map with directions. I then used Siri to "text my daughter", which she did without flaw then asked her to show me the directions again with the exact same wording and, I believe, inflection. Instead of the directions she began an email to someone in the contact list. ????
Now she often responds, 50% of the times asked, through the phone earpiece which is inaudible in the car. Sometimes she speaks through the speaker, sometimes through the earpiece. I can't determine what makes her do this? It happens when the phone is in 'Silent' mode or 'Audible'.
I am utterly frustrated. Clearly it is beta software at best. Amazing when it works correctly, but lately that's only half the time.
My friend and I received our iphone 4s's today and i finally got mine activated on crappy AT&T after hours of trying. Long story short, Siri seems to be completely useless and i wanted to see if others are also experiencing problems. Asking siri extremely simple things such as "Text Pat" do not work reliably. It will either screw it up completely giving "ex Pat" as it's response, or it will just say sorry i didn't understand you. Neither of us have any type of accent or speech impediment. We are both testing in a quiet room with little to no background noise.
The reason i'm so confused is i've seen plenty of videos of this working far better in very noisy environments. Could this perhaps be an issue with apple server load? It would be great to hear other's experiences so far, I didn't expect Siri to be amazing but i did expect to be able to dictate extremely basic text messages which it is failing at completely, we are both extremely disappointed.
I couldn't agree more - Siri is totally useless! Over and over I have tried to get an appropriate response but to no avail. I speak slowly and clearly but Siri continues to reply with senseless responses.
I hate to say this but I honestly think its because people don't know how to use it. I find it incredibly useful.
How are you asking it questions? I say things like this:
"Apartments in Harrisburg PA"
"Sushi restaurants nearby"
"Rental cars nearby"
etc. Its been flawless for me.
If thats the case then they shouldn't have advertised it the way they do on tv. You can do those same things with androids voice search and in my experience androids voice search is better transcribing the words you said accurately.
I use Siri all the time and on the whole find it very useful. I very rarely type any more apart from when in public obviously as you can look a bit of a prat dictating everything.
Living in the UK, my only disappointment with Siri is the common grumble that prior to launch we were assured that there would be location aware searches from Q1 2012.
This hasn't happened and there have been no further announcements to my knowledge of a revised timescale. I accept that Siri is marketed as a beta product but this is still a disappointment, albeit fairly minor.
Overall Siri has saved me quite a bit of time by using it everyday.
Siri typically works alright with me if there is no background noise, and I have a pretty heavy accent, which it has trouble with at times. It doesn't work hardly at all in my Car, but that's more because it runs through my Car phone system. Aside from that, the reason I don't use Siri is because it is completely useless on AT&T, 80% of the time I get a network error.
Had iPhone 4S and Siri rarely worked. Now have iPhone 5 hoping that it would improve Siri...it's just as bad if not worse. Had a BB and it worked perfectly when calling contacts. My latest problem with Siri is when I say call a contact it shows the name on the screen but will take 30 seconds or more to call the number. I called Apple and they told me that my signal strength may be weak but just had the same problem with 5 bars!!! They also suggested a hard reset that didn't help either. I'm somewhat of a geek and know what I'm doing so I can truly say, and without reservation, that Siri really SUCKS big time. Very surprised and disappointed in Apple.
I have a UK accent I find Siri works better for me when i switch it to the UK mode. but i live in the USA and although the iPhone has a GPS knows where i am Siri is so dumb it tells me i have to be in the US to use the MAP feature!!!!!!!!! i find it does the same if i switch to the Australian recognition mode...
Well i am in the US? Just because i sound British does not mean i am in England. there are lots of us that live and or travel to the USA. So i guess apple is saying you can only search us maps when using a US Accent and while located in the USA.
Thats BS.
But after the upgrade to 5.1 it has become useless. I can say something like "Siri where is the closest Wallmart" ( Yes i am in US english mode and in the USA) and the dumb thing sais sorry i dont understand where is the closest wallmart.
Now i know it understood me as it repeated the exact question i asked it back to me it was just clueless as to what i was saying.
or another example is i say "send a text to my wife" and it sais it is calling a random contact from my address book. i have to grab the phone and stop it.
I say remind me to look up a price for air fair to England when i get home and it sais it does not understand me. I ask it again and again slowly and clearly until i just give up.
I have tried it without any earpiece with the one that comes with the phone. with a high end noise canceling blue tooth device. and with Apples blue tooth device none of them give better results. I have 5 phones and none of us are getting better results. and the rest of us are from the US so Accents are not the cause. messed up with this one.