Rumour: Siri on the new iPad with iOS 6?

The voice assistant Siri, exclusively available on the iPhone 4S smartphone, could appear on the new iPad through the iOS 6 upgrade.

While the iPhone 4S closely resembles the iPhone 4 (at least from the outside), the new feature which has been widely written about is the voice assistant Siri, which introduced a natural voice interface as a complement to the tactile interface.

Apple made his function exclusive to the handset, refusing to release it to older mobile devices. The iPhone 4S comes with components dedicated to the system to ensure that the voice recognition is optimised, but attempts at transporting the system have demonstrated that the system works correctly on older models.

The new iPad, launched a few months after the release of the iPhone 4S, doesn’t have the Siri functions. Instead, it comes with a voice recognition module for entering text which can be activated from the tablets virtual keyboard.

There is therefore no possibility of getting feedback from the system. But the situation could change with iOS 6. The site 9to5Mac sates that Siri will appear on the new iPad with the upgrade to iOS 6 – the new major version of Apple’s mobile platform.

Users will find all of the voice assistant’s options except the commands dedicated to mobile telephony. And looking at the quality of the voice recognition present on the new iPad, the quality should be the same as the iPhone 4S even with the microphone further away from the mouth.

9to5Mac also points out that the Siri interface won’t be full screen like on the iPhone 4S but rather in the form of a display that can be activated from the bottom of the screen (notifications are accessible from the top of the screen). Activation from a locked screen will remain possible though.

While Siri works on the iOS 6 beta available on both the new iPad and the iPad 2, there is no guarantee that the assistant will be available on the older tablet, with Apple no wanting to overcrowd the translation servers. The official announcement that Siri could be made available to the new iPad will likely not be made until the OS is released in the autumn, with Apple preferring to highlight the other functions during the presentation of iOS 6 at WWDC.