Siri’s “hold on a moment” problem

[ReardenMetal]

Having owned the S0, S3 and currently an S4, is anyone else annoyed by Siri‘s consistent lag in returning answers?

Siri is, more than half the time, asking me to wait whenever I invoke her, this is especially true when my hands aren’t free and I need to set a simple timer. Surely, not something that must leverage a fleet of Siri servers to complete; it’s a timer. Would it kill my battery to leverage onboard computing power to set something as integral to the watch experience as a timer?

Don’t get me wrong, I still use Siri on my watch many times per day, everyday and like the raise to listen feature that eliminated “Hey Siri”, but I’d like to see far less than half my queries asking for me to wait there while she figures things out. Failed queries are another matter too.

I suspect some of this is because the Bluetooth connection to a nearby iPhone is far slower yet more energy efficient than a WiFi/LTE connection. Would it be too battery intensive to, by default, relay all (or some) Siri queries via wifi and LTE first, then use Bluetooth as the fallback? I don’t know.

Do WiFi/LTE queries suffer the same problem? I don’t know without extensively testing it first. Thinking out loud here as this watch gets better, more amazing and more powerful each year.

 

[musicpenguy]

It is only a problem for me when it used Bluetooth and is taking to Siri through the phone - super fast on WiFi and cellular

 

[Strangedream]

Even with light-speed connection I also find Siri on AW to be underwhelmingly slow. Not sure if it's an S5 only issue.

 

[matrix07]

Siri on my S3 with watchOS 5 was always fast enough but I got “hold a moment” on my X on iOS 13 regularly which never happened on 12.

 

[WilliamG]

Been like this for SO long. Siri is atrociously slow on every single Apple Watch version while connected to iPhone over Bluetooth, and Apple doesn’t seem to care to improve this for reasons beyond me.

 

[StumpyBloke]

Been like this for SO long. Siri is atrociously slow on every single Apple Watch version while connected to iPhone over Bluetooth, and Apple doesn’t seem to care to improve this for reasons beyond me.

I agree. In my opinion Siri is just a **** storm. Absolute garbage. It’s responsiveness I mean. When it works it actually is quite flexible. But that’s when…

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

I've only had my S4 for 5 days, but I use Siri extensively, and so far I've been *very* impressed with Siris speed. She's virtually instant whenever I ask her to do something, which is fantastic. The only times I've encountered issues is when my phone is far away, so I think Siri is trying to connect to it by Bluetooth, resulting in those issues described above. If the phone is nearby, I have no problems at all.

 

[christianji]

I've only had my S4 for 5 days, but I use Siri extensively, and so far I've been *very* impressed with Siris speed. She's virtually instant whenever I ask her to do something, which is fantastic. The only times I've encountered issues is when my phone is far away, so I think Siri is trying to connect to it by Bluetooth, resulting in those issues described above. If the phone is nearby, I have no problems at all.

Are you on WatchOS6 and iOS13 or still on watchOS 5 / iOS12?

 

[Steveatesh]

I've only had my S4 for 5 days, but I use Siri extensively, and so far I've been *very* impressed with Siris speed. She's virtually instant whenever I ask her to do something, which is fantastic. The only times I've encountered issues is when my phone is far away, so I think Siri is trying to connect to it by Bluetooth, resulting in those issues described above. If the phone is nearby, I have no problems at all.

Siri on my Aw4 was really fast until I updated to WatchOS6 but since then she has been very intermittent with speed of response and also breaking off her answer a second or two into her reply. I think OS6 has broken her, Apple support told me its a known issue and is being worked upon.

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

Are you on WatchOS6 and iOS13 or still on watchOS 5 / iOS12?

watchOS5 still.

 

[christianji]

watchOS5 still.

Lucky you. Had mine on OS5 for a few days only, was too confident to update to 6 and then Siri started to fail...

 

[The-Real-Deal82]

Siri has never been great on the watch for me. The amount of times I’ve tried to set a timer and it tries the think about it because of the background noise is unreal. I just turn to my echo and say ‘Alexa, set a bloody timer for 20 mins’ lol. I’d say 7 times out of 10 the watch works though.

 

[Bryan Bowler]

Siri is absolute garbage and an embarrassment to What Apple used to be.

 

[The-Real-Deal82]

Apple have certainly fallen behind the likes of Amazon and Google in the voice assistant stakes IMO.

 

[dmr2112]

Experience it 100% of the time on my Series 0 Apple Watch enough that I didn't bother with using Siri because I could ask my iPhone faster usually. On the Series 5 now and haven't had the issue recently at all. I feel like watch age is probably the main issue. Second is a bluetooth, wifi, LTE speed. I think obviously if a watch is relying on direct wifi or LTE connection it should be instant almost based on location and the wifi obviously. Bluetooth coming from the phone tends to be where most of the problems lie though.

 

[achappy]

Siri on my S3 is really fast and I’m on watchOS6 and iOS 13. It responds immediately on Hey Siri, answers quickly and dictation is fast too. So fast that I returned the S5 I tried out for a week because I didn’t see much difference in speed.

However, there is a caveat. One of the iOS 13 Betas unpaired my watch and I was forced to repair as new. Ever since then my S3 has been extremely fast. watchOS 6 didn’t change anything for me.

 

[christianji]

Experience it 100% of the time on my Series 0 Apple Watch enough that I didn't bother with using Siri because I could ask my iPhone faster usually. On the Series 5 now and haven't had the issue recently at all. I feel like watch age is probably the main issue. Second is a bluetooth, wifi, LTE speed. I think obviously if a watch is relying on direct wifi or LTE connection it should be instant almost based on location and the wifi obviously. Bluetooth coming from the phone tends to be where most of the problems lie though.

Feel you're right. Today I shut down my iPhone SE and connected to home Wifi which is pretty strong with my AW4. Disabled Siri on watch, restarted Watch and re-enabled it. Siri has been quick and snappy, 100% reliable as it should be.
Turned on phone then, connected via bluetooth and Siri is gone...