iPhone 4s Possible Fixes for Battery Drain and Siri Problems
Count Siri in as another headache for iPhone 4s users. The voice controlled assistant was down for some users on Thursday with users complaining online about their problems getting Siri to respond to voice commands.
Siri is the built-in virtual assistant that uses voice commands to perform certain functions. It can make text messages and appointments. Siri's biggest draw is in using a network connection to search the Web for answers to the user's questions. It's this functionality that's been down for users.
This is the second widespread outage of Siri. The voice controlled virtual assistant also suffered an outage when the iPhone 4s was released on October 14. This time around the outage seems to be connected to overloaded Apple servers.
A number of iPhone 4s users have reported Siri's failure to connect to the network. The problem isn't specific to a service provider. Some devices can get results from Siri while others get the message saying that there's a connectivity problem.
A possible solution was put up by a user on AppleInsider that says users should turn the iPhone off and restart it. Siri was able to work for a few minutes after the reset. However that didn't seem to work for other iPhone devices on other networks. Re-starting the phone is one possible fix if you're having problems with Siri but again this doesn't seem to be a fool-proof fix.
Siri isn't the only problem Apple users have faced in the last few days. "Battery-gate", as the battery life problem has been dubbed, has also enraged users. The bad battery life has been attributed to bugs in the iOS 5 system. One of the do it yourself fix that users have recommended for the battery life issue is by turning off location services. Another possible solution is to turn off location based reminders or to adjust screen brightness. If your iPhone is suffering from battery life problems, try some of the above solutions.
Apple hasn't responded to the problems with Siri which seems to be in line with Apple policy regarding any technical problems. The company only responded yesterday to persistent reports about battery life problems in the iPhone 4S with a generic promise to look into the problem in a future update. Granted Siri is still in beta and an iOS 5 update should resolve the battery problems, these are still concerns that Apple should have responded to immediately.