Why Siri can’t hear you well on your iPhone 4

Posted February 5, 2012 by Istvan in Mobile

We simply love our iPhone 4—the “Antennagated” device—but when Siri was introduced, the thought of a personal assistant drove many people to different hacks saying they would have Siri on their own device. But Siri doesn’t react as well as on an iPhone 4S, and the procedure is pretty complicated. And Cnet’s Stephen Shankland found some answers why.

The whole story starts at a start-up called Audience, that licensed its noise-reduction circuitry to Apple. Audience has developed the earSmart technology, aiming to bring clear conversations by reducing the background noise.

However, the mystery of Siri broke through when Audience revealed details of its Apple partnership in late January, as the start-up filed paperwork for an IPO. The tech sphere wasn’t aware of any Audience chip implemented in the iPhone 4S until this information went public. What we did know was that with the help of iFixit and Chipworks’ teardown,the iPhone 4 has a dedicated Audience chip.

Audience’s IPO filing revealed that the iPhone 4S integrates the start-up’s latest “EarSmart” technology directly in its A5 chip. This somehow explains the size of that process too.

The technology Audience had developed at the time of the iPhone 4 launch was good enough—it needs the speaker’s mouth to be close to the phone to perform at its best. Within a year, Audience managed to improve its technology, allowing Apple to bring Siri to its devices. The EarSmart technology gives the user the liberty of using their phones at arm’s length, which is more natural when making a video call, or when in the car with a headset on, etc.

The beloved iPhone 4 lacks this technology, which means you can hack your iDevice to have Siri on board, but far-field uses make the device vulnerable to background noise interference. Furthermore, as long as you don’t keep your iPhone 4 close to your mouth, Siri will not hear you well, which means the result will be poor.

Now Audience reports that its third generation of noise-reduction technology is on the way. As a result of their long-term partnership, Apple is a licensee of this technology, but isn’t contractually required to use it.

However, we can expect to find it in its upcoming and eagerly awaited iPad 3 and its A6 processor.

Apple is not the only company in partnership with Audience. Their client list includes HTC, LG, Pantech, Samsung, Sharp and Sony, Audience said.