Wonder why Apple keeps saying Siri will not be available on iPhone 4? Read below for the real explanation.

Apple’s A5 chip incorporates dedicated noise reduction circuitry by Audience, Inc., which optimizes the performance of Siri voice recognition on iPhone 4S.

Although earlier generation of this circuitry was already available on iPhone 4, it was not optimized for voice recognition technology.

Audience explains:

“by imitating the complex processing that occurs from the inner ear to the brain, Audience’s intelligent earSmart technology distinguishes and interprets sounds as people do naturally. In a mobile device, the earSmart processor effectively isolates and enhances the primary voice signal and suppresses surrounding noise–for both transmit and receive–to enable clear conversations nearly anywhere.”

They also note that “far-field uses are more vulnerable to background noise interference and poor voice quality given the speaker’s distance from the device,” which means speaking to a TV e.g. Apple TV across the room would be far more difficult to correctly recognize speeches compared to Siri on iPhone 4S due to the distance between the source and the destination.

It’s quite common for Apple to “white label” components on their logic boards. That means you won’t be able to see the brand or manufacturer on the components. In this case, Chipworks, a company that does reverse engineering and patent infringement analysis to the world’s largest semiconductor and microelectronics companies, decamped the part and found Audience’s name printed on the chips die marking.

Chipworks thought that “the iPhone’s audio cancellation capabilities are very impressive, outperforming every non-Audience powered cell phone we’ve tried.”

Finally, a report on CNET mentioned “this situation helps explain why Apple does not offer Siri as a software upgrade on the iPhone 4. Although the older phone includes an Audience chip, the company has since improved its technology to handle ‘far-field speech,’ which means holding the device at arm’s length rather than directly in front of the mouth”

Although it’s possible to hack older iPhones to enable Siri, there’s still an underlying hardware limitation to allow Siri to achieve its potential performance.

(via AppleInsider)

The world is waiting for the unlock for iPhone 4 baseband 4.11.08. We’ve heard far too many rumors and fakes out there claiming they were able to unlock it. Tired of waiting? Try Gmate, a great gadget that allows you to use your iPhone 4 again; while waiting for an unlock.

Gmate has been around for a while now surprisingly not that many people are aware of this great gadget. It is a Bluetooth accessory that is essentially a phone minus keyboard, screen, memory and audio functions. It then links to your Bluetooth-enabled iPhone to use its resources. Think of it as a dumb mobile phone.

It’s baseband independent, that means it doesn’t matter what your baseband version is, you can still use it. So to those who are stuck on 4.11.08, this is a great solution for now. If the unlock is out, you can still use it on your iPad or any of your Android phones. If you have a 3GS with baseband 5.16.05 on Toshiba chip, this is a good stop-gap measure until a proper unlock tool becomes available.

On your iPhone, you need to install the Gmate app (supported on both iOS and Android) to allow it to connect to the Gmate. The app will import your address book so that you can call your contacts and all that.

It also serves as a 3G modem. If you have a Wi-Fi only iPad, for instance, then this becomes a useful way of surfing anywhere via 3G.

You HAVE to use the Gmate app to make calls via the Gmate, rather than using the original phone app. Gmate app imports your contacts with a push of a button.

Gmate app can only be installed via Cydia so your iPhone must be jailbroken in order to use it. That’s no longer a problem since the jailbreak for iOS 5.0.1 is now untethered.

It’s a fuss to bring an additional gadget around but hey… you wanted a working phone, remember?

Pre-order here!

Finally the wait is over. The untethered jailbreak for A5 based devices running on iOS 5.0.1 is now available with a tool called Greenpois0n Absinthe.

This tool was released a few hours ago by Chronic Development Team, with the collaboration of Pod2g and the iPhone Dev Team. Absinthe is a French word which is historically described as a distilled, highly alcoholic beverage. Since Pod2g is French, this can be the reason why this word was chosen.

Currently, it’s now only available for Mac but Windows and Linux version should be available any time soon.

Before you begin, you need to make sure that your device is already running iOS 5.0 or 5.0.1. Backing up your device is highly recommended.

Steps

1. Download Greenpois0n Absinthe for Mac, Windows or Linux.

2. Connect your iPhone 4S or iPad 2 to your computer.

3. Launch Absinthe and click jailbreak. It may take a while so just sit back and wait.

4. Once done you will see the Absinthe icon on your springboard or home screen.

5. Connect to WiFi and tap on Absinthe. It may take a while to download all Cydia files as the server may be very busy. If you get an error message simply try again.

That’s it! You should now have Cydia installed and enjoy installing all your favorite jailbreak apps!

Image by followmefoodie.com

I was wondering why it took a while for iH8sn0w to release the latest version of redsn0w. He actually planned it for the special release today in conjunction with sn0wbreeze’s 2nd year anniversary.

Sn0wbreeze is my favorite tool to create custom firmware as it will always guarantee that your baseband is preserved.

iH8sn0w has just released version 2.9 and he announced it on his blog:

• Happy birthday sn0wbreeze!
• Brought back old firmware support in one release!
• GUI Improvements
• You can now build IPSWs with TinyUmbrella/iFaith blobs!
• Removes OTA Updates/badge on iOS 5.x.x+ devices.
• Added an IPSW Downloader
• Built-in iREB functionality updated from newest iREB r5 module.
• Custom Packages in Expert actually works now.
• All supported firmwares in this release are untethered.
• A5 devices are NOT supported at this time due to no public DFU/iBoot exploit.

Supported iOS Revisions:

The launch of the Apple iPhone 4S, originally planned for today, has been cancelled due to overnight fights and riots among scalpers and genuine buyers.

Queues began forming yesterday at both the Sanlitun and Xidan stores in Beijing. Courtesy thebeijinger.

The Xidan store launch went ahead but their stock sold out within two hours.

At Beijing’s Apple Store in Sanlitun, customers (or scalpers?) threw eggs at the glass walls. Crowds were then asked to leave; they were told the launch was cancelled. Police were there to disperse crowds.

It’s rumored that the crowd was mainly made up of teams of scalpers.

Scalpers started hiring people to queue up at Apple Stores in Beijing since about a week ago. Translation: “Hiring: 200 sales positions available. 100 yuan per day, report at Sanlitun between 6-9pm on January 12, 2012. Salary will be paid the next day at 8am. Meal included. (Any gender or age).”

Meanwhile in Shanghai, hundreds of people wearing red caps were seen queuing. It is believed that they were people hired by scalpers.

Finally, this sign says “The queue ends here. iPhone 4S is now out of stock.”

Sadly, it will be difficult for genuine buyers to get their hands on the iPhone 4S. Absolute madness.

Images: TheBeijinger, MIC Gadget.

You don’t own an iPhone 4S, but you would still like to have Siri on your iDevice. We have a few legal solutions for your problems.

Spire

This is an app that can be downloaded from Cydia (so yes, you do need a jailbroken device).

The installation will take approximately 100MB directly from the Apple servers (and yes, it is legal), so make sure you are connected to a wireless network.

This method is by far the most advanced, since it is actually Siri voice recognition that will be installed on your device. However you will not be able to actually use the Siri as if at an iPhone 4S. Siri sends the data to the Apple servers directly, and receives back the information it needs. That can only happen (for now) with an iPhone 4S. The solution is to have your own Siri Proxy Setup, or use any available online hosts as shown below (Beware. By using these connections, the information sent might not be secured or protected. For instance, if you ask Siri to send a message, that request will be sent to the chosen server to compute. So by then it could be “read” or “copied”, thus endangering the system’s security).

Below you can find a few FREE proxy server hosts. However these have proven to be the most stable ones, others can be found online:

What if your device is not jailbroken? Fortunately we have an answer for you. There are a couple of solutions worth to mention from the App store.

Vlingo

By far the most interesting (and with good reviews) is Vlingo. It accepts orders to send SMS’s, E-mail, to search Maps, make Social Updates, Web Search and it can also Voice Dial. All of this on a free app.

Of course it has a few drawbacks. It doesn’t rise to the Siri level on voice recognition. Vlingo doesn’t speak back or reply when spoken to. It is highly inaccurate on loud environments, and sometimes it requests to tap when we’re finished talking. But most of the times it is reliable, and most importantly, it is for free. Besides, you can install it in your older iDevices, as iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, and even on an iPhone 3G (yes, I tested it, and it works).

Voice-Actions

Another virtual assistant app is “Voice-actions”. Voice-actions is a paied app (3.99$). Besides doing everything Vlingo does, Voice-Actions also allows you to set reminders and alarms, ask questions, play music and even get instant translations. With these enhancements it is said to be the best alternative for Siri, available to the older models. It is indeed an alternative worth considering if you’re not planning to upgrade your iPhone soon.

Given the high demand of Siri on older devices, it’s will just be a matter of time to see more and more of Siri like apps appearing in the iPhone community.

This seems to be the most promising news for those who are stuck on baseband 4.11.08. Read on to learn more.

About two months ago an unknown hacker called hamzah_akram explored the possibility of erasing iPhone 4 baseband information. He was able to erase it but wasn’t sure how to proceed from there.

However, after countless hours he made a breakthrough and has successfully unlocked baseband 4.11.08. Based on his blog and his tweets, it’s very likely that he modified the iOS 5 IPSW file and SIM interposer i.e. Gevey Turbo SIM to make the unlock work.

On his Twitter today:

“Dear guys! the up coming nice thing for all of you is called #react0r ! #4.11.08 …. No donation required! this will end the #4.11.08 age!.”

So far there are no further details on how this news and he intends to make this unlock method available free of charge to the masses.

True or false? Only time will tell.

If you have a Gevey Ultra, chances are that you’re not able to use it properly since iOS 5.0 was released. Now that the untethered jailbreak is available for iOS 5.0.1, you can patch FuriousMod to make it fully working again. Follow the steps below:

Step 1: Install iOS 5.0.1 on your iPhone 4 using custom firmware to preserve your baseband.

Step 2: Jailbreak iOS 5.0.1 using redsn0w 0.9.10b3 or Corona by following the steps here.

Step 3: Add the following source to your Cydia Sources to install it.

http://cydia.myrepospace.com/Squuiid/

That’s all to it! If you have an older Gevey Turbo SIM just use the 112 steps which you should already know by now.

Please note that baseband 4.11.08 is not supported!

Thanks to Vinh Vuong and mcbaron15 for the tip!

We’ve just returned from our vacation so this post may be a bit dated but we’re going to post it anyway.

If you don’t already know, hackers have officially released the untethered jailbreak for all A4 and earlier devices running iOS 5.0.1. Meanwhile pod2g et al will also be releasing the untethered jailbreak for iPhone 4S and iPad 2. Woohoo to Chronic Dev Team and Boohoo for iPhone Dev Team.

Assuming that you have already installed iOS 5.0.1 and already jailbroken it, then the first method below would be a piece of cake.

Method 1: Untethered Jailbreak iOS 5.0.1 with Corona

Step 1: Launch Cydia and search for Corona Untether 5.0.1.

Step 2: Tap “Install” and let Cydia do the rest of the job for you.

That’s it! You can now safely reboot your iPhone, iPod, or iPad without using redsn0w or iBooty.

**********

Method 2: Untethered Jailbreak iOS 5.0.1 with redsn0w 0.9.10b3

Assuming that you’re already on iOS 5.0.1 but have yet to jailbreak it, then this method is for you.

Step 1: Download RedSn0w 0.9.10b3 from the Dev Team’s website.

Step 2: Plug your iDevice in and put it in DFU mode.

Step 3: Launch RedSn0w and click on “Jailbreak” and select “Install Cydia”.

That’s all you need to do!

What a great start to 2012! Stay tuned for the untethered jailbreak for iPhone 4s and iPad 2 on iOS 5.0.1. For unlockers, remember to always preserve your baseband with custom firmware!

iPhone 4 and 3GS users on jailbroken iOS 5.0.1 can now install ultrasn0w 1.2.5 to unlock their iPhones.

How to install ultrasn0w 1.2.5

Before you start, please remove the SIM card from your iPhone.

Step 1: Launch Cydia from the springboard.

Step 2: Tap on Manage.

Step 3: Search for ultrasn0w on Packages in Cydia. If you cannot find it, add new Source by typing: ‘repo666.ultrasn0w.com‘ (…sn0w = the digit zero, not O)

Step 4: A new ultrasnow package will be installed. Once done, go to Packages and look for ultrasnow. Tap and install it. During installation, you will see a black screen with running command lines.

Step 5: Reboot your iPhone and insert your SIM card. Toggle the Airplane mode to ON and then OFF. Your iPhone will search and register to your mobile phone network.

Please be patient, sometimes it may take up to 3 minutes. If it doesn’t register, reboot your iPhone again.

This updated version of ultrasn0w doesn’t unlock newer basebands. It only supports the following:

• 4.26.08
• 5.11.07
• 5.12.01
• 5.13.04
• 6.15.00 (iPad’s baseband implanted into iPhone)
• 1.59.00 (iPhone 4)

If the jailbreak is tethered, do not forget to use redsn0w or iBooty to tether boot your iPhone. Otherwise you will be stuck on the Apple logo.