“In iPhones past, the IR proximity sensors would only switch on when a phone or Skype call was initiated. The sensor could detect that a face was near and then smartly dim the display / kill the keyboard, and then resume normal activity once it detected the face was not in close proximity anymore,” iFixit reports.
“The 4S, however, has a neurotic tendency of always wondering how close your face is. As long as the screen is activated, that IR sensor will be shining brightly,” iFixit reports. “So we began to ponder: why is the 4S so interested in our faces’ whereabouts? Well, we believe the answer lies with our new search-servant Siri.”
iFixit reports, “Siri is ready and waiting to answer her master’s beck and call at any time. And in order to be as attentive as a personal assistant ought to be, Apple had to design the proximity sensor to be as vigilant as Big Brother, but as cute as Little Sister. So whenever the screen is active, the proximity sensor is active too. Thus, whenever you raise the iPhone 4S to your face, Siri is ready to take orders.”
Read more in the full article here.
,,,does it have to be your face?
–whoa, I mean is the IR sensor going off from any other warm object on the screen side? I mean your hand — oh, never mind…
Dunno ’bout you, but my own personal proximity censor started going off the miinute I started watching that video. You know, sort of like those early cell phones with the antenna that you pulled out for better, uh …
Cool! Is this why my iPhone 4S(teve) has worse battery life?
Well, not why only the 4s gets Siri, but why only the 4s has ‘raise to activate’ mode, perhaps. The iPad 2 could still have her… 🙂
You can, of course, turn this feature off in the Settings. I did because it kept doing things at inopportune times.
And iFixit just found this out now? This has been an option in the Settings > General > Siri called “Raise to Speak”
Isn’t it just a matter of rewriting some code to change when the proximity sensor is active, and when it is not?
Regardless, I don’t think THIS ranks very high on the list of reasons Apple does not want Siri on iPhones before iPhone 4S. More likely reasons:
+ Performance. User experience is VERY important to Apple, obviously. Even if Siri can work on earlier iPhones, they may not (officially) support it if the response delay time increases noticeably.
+ Product differentiation. Apple wants Siri to be a unique feature of iPhone 4S, as least in the near term.
+ During the “beta” of Siri, Apple does not want to overtax the servers that run the network-based component of Siri. So brand new iPhone 4S only, at least in the near term.
… that being, “dual inputs”. The 4S has not one, but TWO microphones – at least for Siri use. One might be enough for sound pickup, but you need the second for Noise Cancellation, which is important for clarity.
We were playing with our iPad2 the other night and noticed a) how GREAT the word recognition was (with no “training”) and b) how easy it was for extraneous chatter to be input into the “text”. Noise Cancellation would have helped to eliminate that.
But that’s not even the default (Siri with phone to ear). The default is the damn button on the screen. There is absolutely no reason why Siri shouldn’t work on the iPad 2…other than Apple deciding to not allow it.
Ok, thanks for the info. But I already realized this when I saw that siri could be activated this way.
Who cares about the iPhone sensors… that beautiful young lady is too damn cute. I believe I’d watch her drone on about almost anything as long as she’s that peppy and energetic.
I think its really Uma Thuman in disguise.
Maybe it’s C1 in disguise? nah. too peppy.
Nah, that ain’t Uma, she was the sister of one of my high school classmates, and that ain’t her in disguise.
I would like Siri to detect when certain people are out of earshot.
Geek girl alert!
It’s called product differentiation… Apple makes money on hardware sales, but they do offer free software upgrades for older devices, so in order to entice people to upgrade to new hardware they offer something extra. It’s really not an uncommon practice. ALL consumer electronics do this. Pay more for additional features.
Hardware sales subsidize Apple’s software. It should be no surprise that when a brand new costly feature is introduced it only appears on new hardware from that point on.
People like to act like Apple leaves older devices out in the cold, but they just released an OS that still supports mobile devices 2.5 years old… name ANY other manufacture that does the same. And that older device runs even better with the new OS.
“Raise to talk” doesn’t always work for me. No idea why not.
——RM
People still don’t get it.
– Apple will not change the design if they feel there’s no need to. Changing the design just for the sake of change is not Apple’s way. They got it right the first time.
– To suggest that Apple has not “fixed the antenna issue” would mean people are expecting Apple to fix an Industry issue that’s common with all smartphones in the industry. Don’t set your expectations too high.
I think I’m in love with Jane.