How to make the most of Siri

Bought an iPhone 4S recently and not quite sure what to make of the voice recognition tool and virtual personal assistant, Siri?

You’re not the only one, many iPhone owners will have used Siri once or twice when they first got the phone and then activated it again.

Set reminders using Siri

Why? Perhaps it didn’t work perfectly first time, or maybe it just seems too different from the traditional way of doing things.

You should persist, though, because Siri is astounding and can answer lots of questions at the touch of a button.

1. Activate Siri

If, for some reason, you have actually tried Siri on your iPhone 4S yet, you should give it a go. It’s designed to be as simple as possible – just go to Settings>General>Siri and turn it on. Now, whenever you hold down the Home button, you’ll activate Siri. You’ll hear a couple of beeps, then its ready for your question.

2. Siri is designed to understand ‘real language’.

What that means is that it doesn’t need specific codewords to trigger an action. With rival services, for example, you might have to say ‘Call Lisa’ to activate a speed dial setting. With Siri, you can say anything – like ‘Phone my mum’ – and it will search your address book. Over time, you can teach Siri who your relatives are without altering their contact details.

3. Exchange rates & sums

The most useful application of Siri is – just like Google Voice Search – for asking questions that can be answered online. You can ask Siri to work out a sum, or calculate current exchange rates, for example, with a question like ‘what’s £48 in dollars?’. You’ll never have to reach for a calculator again.

4. Make appointments

Siri can also schedule appointments, based on time or location. Because it can read the GPS settings of your phone, for example, asking it to set a reminder for ‘When I get home’ will work as well as setting one for 6pm. Siri can also check the status of your phone battery if you ask it.

5. Use Siri without pressing the home button

One of the neatest tricks, though, is that Siri can be activated automatically without pressing the home button at all. In Settings>General>Siri, you’ll find an option for ‘Raise to speak’. Check this, and lifting the phone to your ear without having dialled a number will turn Siri on – so just pick up the phone, ask it to call someone, and it will.

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