Picking up your iPhone 4S tomorrow? We’ve got some Siri related sorrow to go with the mirth from earlier: we’ve learned that not only are navigation look-ups US-only, but local directory searches won’t work in the UK either.
One of the much-hyped features of the Siri voice assistant for iPhone 4S has been its ability to look up stuff around you. As iOS boss Scott Forstall demoed at Apple’s press conference earlier this month, you can ask it to find nearby restaurants, or even show you the way home.
That’s great, except new owners of the iPhone 4S are in for a shock. They will find that they can’t. As Stephen Fry touched on in his review for the Guardian, maps and direction Siri requests are US only for now.
To be fair, Apple has flagged this up in small text right from the start: it was on a slide during the conference, and is mentioned on Apple’s website. More of a blow however is that we’ve learned there is no UK partner for local look-up.
Yell provides the answers for these Siri searches in America, but we’ve heard from those lucky enough to try an iPhone 4S on British soil already that there is no equivalent in Blighty. Forget those requests for a nearby kebab, boozer or even a taxi home.
Hopefully Apple will soon fix this and ink a deal that opens up Siri for those of us on British turf, but for anyone set on upgrading tomorrow it’ll come as a bitter blow nonetheless.
Is this a deal breaker for you, or will you be picking up an iPhone 4S to shout at anyway? Let us know in the comments.
