Siri, or the Lack of

[Thorax_the_Impaler]

Hello everyone!

Thanks to a family member, I recently received an iPhone 4. Such a pretty phone and I absolutely love it, but I've always had a question about this one versus the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 that no one has been able to answer, particularly because Apple has never specifically given the reason. Simple question, why does the iPhone 4 not support Siri? I don't find Siri all that useful honestly, and I don't particularly want it or anything; but I've always been curious as to why the 4S had it and why the 4 did not. I've heard a slew of suggestions, accusations, and theories, but the one I'm sticking with is my own. My theory is that the A4 Chip (single core, 1GHz underclocked to 800MHz), could hypothetically support Siri, but due to the lack of a second core, performance would suffer, and therefore is does not have Siri, at least not natively.

What are your thoughts? Does anyone know something I don't? Remember this is just sheer curiosity here.

EDIT: And thanks for your time/answers. Always greatly appreciated.

 

[iFargle]

I believe the 4S and up had some kind of voice recognition technology (physical hardware too, like another microphone or something) that the 4 didn't have.

 

[MillField]

I'm pretty sure that the 4S and the 5 have a different microphone built with Siri in mind.

 

[Frosty is a Snowman]

Just to clear a few things up
1. it does not need a special magical microphone
2. it does not need additional specialist hardware
3. the 4 was not limited hardware wise for this app to run

Siri would have worked on an iPhone 4
Apple did not want to release it on older devices
It was their marketing tool and showcase app for the 4s/5
What's the point in releasing a new bit of tech if the old one comes with the same bells and whistles
People have made hacks\ports of siri for the iPhone 4, some of them require you to jailbreak the phone, install hacked versions of iOS6 etc.
but I am more than confident it was nothing to do with a lack of hardware features, I know some of the apps and features on teh 4s\5 would have caused the 4 to run slower, but there was and is nothing from a hardware point of view that would stop this from working.
Apple just didn't want this to happen, so it didn't.

 

[Thorax_the_Impaler]

Just to clear a few things up
1. it does not need a special magical microphone
2. it does not need additional specialist hardware

Actually the A5 chip DOES hint at some noise cancellation that the A4 chip lacks. And that makes sense; if Siri wouldn't work "adequately" because of this, knowing Apple they would just straight up deny support for older devices. However, you are right that Siri doesn't require this technology to work; the theory goes that it helps Siri understand commands better. Siri works when it's ported to jailbroken devices; the biggest problems aren't always due to the iPhone itself. At least not directly.