TheGad

Heres a new significant and big step on porting Siri on iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. The last few weeks we saw many screenshots and videos showing Siri running on all iDevices but without connecting Apple servers. Now hackers has just did it.


Steven Troughton-Smith is the guy behind this progress. This guy was the first one worked on porting Siri on iPhone 4 with the iPhone developer Chpwn. Few minutes ago Chpwn confirmed on his timeline that siri connected Apples servers on iPhone 4 after hack session.

When Siri come to iPhone 4, 3GS, iPod Touch 4G, 3G, iPad ?
No official release date announced so far. But diffidently it looks very imminent.

Siri on iPod Touch 4G [Video] :

Update : Folks at 9to5mac filmed an interesting video that compared between iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S running Siri


Heres an interview with Steven the guy behind this great job.

Mark: Where do you go from here with the port?

Steven: At this point it’s all about confirming this works across devices, making it reproducible (we got it working on two devices today), and documenting everything. It does require files from an iPhone 4S which aren’t ours to distribute, and it also requires a validation token from the iPhone 4S that has to be pulled live from a jailbroken iPhone 4S, and it’s about a 20-step process right now.

Mark: In its current state, is the port 100% functional, is there anything you would like to see work better?

Steven: Yes, it seems to be 100% functional. I’m working on the rough edges, but everything that works on the iPhone 4S seems to work here

Mark: Do you ever see Siri showing up in Cydia (or another jailbreak store) for non natively supported devices?

Steven: No, I could not be a part of that. I have no doubts that others will package this up and distribute it quasi-illegally, or try and sell it to people. I am only interested in the technology and making it work; proving that it works and works well on the iPhone 4 and other devices

Mark: So, you also got Siri working on the fourth-generation iPod touch, how is that working out?

Steven: We got chpwn’s iPod touch up and running with Siri after proving it works on my iPhone 4. Unfortunately the microphone on the iPod is nowhere near as good as the iPhone – you will notice that the Siri level meter hardly moves when you talk to it. While it does work, you have to speak loudly and clearly to the iPod

Mark: How long did porting take you, what was the “I got it” moment?

Steven: Basically, I already had everything I needed to make it work. I had spent a lot of time mapping out in my head exactly how Siri works on the iPhone. All I needed was access to a jailbroken iPhone 4S to put my hunch to the test. It literally took no longer than 10 minutes to put all the pieces in place and perform our first test on my iPhone 4, and it was an instant success.

We know Apple previously tested Siri on iPhone 4 and older devices but hasn’t enabled the voice recognition software to work on customers’ iOS devices released before the iPhone 4S. Meanwhile however, the hacking community cracked Apple’s digital secretary to work on jailbroken devices and ported the dictation feature to iPhone 4. And now, it looks like a Chinese hacker group called CD-Team was able to create the first fully-featured Siri port. Called H1Siri, it’s already available on Cydia, a third-party store carrying unsanctioned software for jailbroken devices. The hack lets you use the full range of Siri features on both jailbroken fourth-generation iPod touch and GSM/CDMA iPhone 4 running either iOS 5.0 or the latest 5.0.1 version.

According to iClarified, the 100MB download is available via both Cydia.be and iphone3gsystem.fr/cydia repositories (select Manage > Sources > Edit in Cydia, add the sources and do a search for H1Siri). Be advised that H1Siri comes from a relatively unknown party and contains cracks so it’s likely illegal. Also note it passes your personal information to a shady third-party server. If you’re interested, a how-to guide is available here. Some think the hack takes advantage of SiriProxy, a proxy server that fools Siri into believing it is talking to Apple’s servers.


Please note that we couldn’t determine at press time the magic behind this tweak and some users reported intermittent connectivity issues, another indication of H1Siri talking to a third-party proxy server rather than communicate with the Apple cloud directly. The Siri Proxy project has been used to enable interesting uses, from managing a radio-controlled thermostat to controlling your Plex media center to starting your car.

As for jailbreaking, those waiting for an untethered iOS 5 jailbreak will be happy to know that a new tool is now available for easy downgrading to iOS 5.0…


Called iFaith, a Windows application, it lets you circumvent Apple’s restricted downgrade system which prevents people from downgrading their devices to an older iOS 5.x firmware. The new version, iFaith 1.4, works around that Apple-imposed limitation by permitting unsigned restores based on dumped iOS 5 signature hash blobs. This is important because, as noted by MuscleNerd, an upcoming untethered iOS 5 jailbreak might require iFait for user restores. According to the iFaith developer, iH8sn0w, it is possible to restore to iOS 5.0.1 and preserve iPhone 4 baseband by dumping the blobs with iFaith first. The tool does not support A5 devices yet. Because the sn0wbreeze tool (another iH8sn0w’s creation) isn’t capable of iFaith blobs yet, users are advised to use the redsn0w app. More information in iH8sn0w’s video tour included below. As for Siri, an iPhone 4S exclusive that currently understands and can speak English, French and German, Apple says “in 2012, Siri will support additional languages, including Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Italian, and Spanish”. Apple’s language technologies engineers are already hard at work developing Siri for the Chinese market.