For years people have been struggling to understand how to use phones and a user’s manual hardly ever gets read. Most people just struggle through the process and try to understand how to send messages, set reminders, put on an alarm clock or even phone somebody. Luckily for us, there is now a phone that does all of these things just by us telling it do so. In this article I may refer to Siri as a friend of mine, but I am sure after you use it for a while it will feel like you carrying a personal assistant in your pocket too.

The new Apple iPhone comes with this little feature called Siri. Maybe “little” is not the best word to use as this is actually a big feature for mobile devices. Siri comes as a built in app when you purchase the iPhone 4S. The phone by itself is already a magnificent device but the addition of the app makes it absolutely fantastic. Voice recognition has evolved pretty well over the last few years, as far as computer hardware and software is involved. The staff at Apple, using the iOS, have seemed to perfect it by creating Siri.

Using only your voice you can now tell your phone exactly what you want it to do. If you want to set up a meeting reminder simply specify a date, time and who the meeting is with. When I say specify I actually mean just say the words “at 3pm tomorrow I am meeting with Lance”. Your phone will then talk back to you and say that it has set up your meeting with Lance. This makes meetings super easy to set up even if you are very busy with work, as the whole process can take between 10 seconds to a minute. Usually you would tell yourself that you need to add the meeting reminder later but now you don’t have to face the risk of forgetting to pitch up for your meeting because you can have a reminder in seconds. Additionally, if you need to send a text message and not just a quick “hi dad” then all you need to do is say the whole message to Siri and it will translate your words into text so that you don’t have to type a single thing.

Waking up in the morning and going outside to check how the weather is, is now a thing of the past. With Siri you can simply ask it what the weather is going to be and it will give you an on screen display of the weather for the whole week. Another thing the Siri can do is search the web for whatever you want to find out. Need to find some information on your latest work project or just need the latest industry news? Just say it and Siri will find it.

Getting lost is not an option with this app. Yes, we are all use to the conventional GPS system but now it is even easier to get directions. All you have to do is say “directions from point A to point B”. Even better is the location services that you can use – it knows where you are and if you tell it to “call a taxi” it knows exactly what to do from there.

This is a mobile phone revolution that has been tried in the past with voice dialling and text message dictation, but it never really worked outstandingly well in the past. The hype of Siri is a huge one and I am sure that it will live up to this once it arrives. This is taking hands free to another level and really setting the bar high for future phones that want to incorporate features like this.

Darren Vrede is an Online content writer and enjoys writing about the latest technology hitting the streets. Currently he’s researching the improved online surveys for businesses and how effective customer surveys are.