I may be one of the few who upgraded from an SE to a 9 because of the onboard Siri. I commute 2.5 hours a day. During that time, I try to get some of my business done. I think that the Siri experience is a lot better now. The responses are definitely faster, and they rarely get dropped. I feel like the responses are more consistently on point. I also believe that the speech-to-text is more accurate.
Siri’s still not perfect by any means, and I’m still amazed and disappointed that Apple has neglected her for so long. (Among so many smaller issues, misspelling a name when you’re responding through a Contact where the name is spelled out correctly. I could go on and on…)
What do you all think? Is Siri a part of your life, and has the 9 advanced her relevance to you?
I’m thinking of upgrading to an S9 as well (or maybe an S8). My SE is starting to show it’s age with loading any type of app, and I noticed yesterday that Siri was struggling too. I’ve also been looking to upgrade to a cellular watch so OB Siri would be really nice.
I just upgraded to the Ultra 2 and onboard Siri is one of the most significant improvements for me. The Apple Watch seems to struggle when transitioning from Bluetooth to WiFi and LTE and a lot of times Siri would fail if it was making a transition. For example I run every morning and use my watch to open/close my garage door. Very often Siri would fail as I’m walking down my driveway and it’s still trying to hold onto Bluetooth. I eventually figured out I had to walk all the way out to the street and then hang out for 30secs and then ask Siri to close the door. With my U2, Siri has yet to fail to work and it’s WAY faster. I have a ton of home automation in my home and it’s so much more responsive with onboard Siri.
I’m surprised onboard Siri isn’t being talked about more often.
I’m also surprised at the number of people that don’t use Siri at all. This morning everyone is digging out their phones to Google how old Cher is. I’m like, “Siri, how old is Cher”, 77. They are still unlocking their phones and I’ve already got their answer.
I’ll be on a run and see trash cans at the curb… “Siri, remind me when I get home to take out the trash”. Also while out for a run I’ll see someone’s sprinklers running which will remind me, “Siri, start the sprinklers”. Or if I drive to a good running spot I’ll throw my phone, keys and wallet in the trunk and use Siri to lock my car. Used it a bunch of times for setting timers in the kitchen today.
What do y’all ask Siri to do exactly?
#1 … making a call from a Contact. #2 … constructing a text from a Contact with speech-to-text. #3 … reading and responding to incoming texts. #4 … setting timers and alarms. #5 … music volume control. #6 … weather status. #7 … time, including time in other cities. I’m experimenting with using it to get directions from Maps, but honestly I don’t like the Maps app much so I use this sparingly. Also experimenting using it to play things on Spotify. That hasn’t proved very reliable.
Apple Music integration, unlock my door after a run, other smart home control, set timers, set reminders
I do most of my running in the dark and my low light vision has gotten terrible and I can’t see the tiny time up in the top right corner so I’ll ask Siri what time it is while I’m out running. Hahaha
Can OB Siri tell you how long you’ve been exercising while doing a workout or what your current heart rate or zone is?
Does it do better with asking to play a specific radio station i.e. Siri play radio station WGN 720 AM will sometimes result in music playing from some artist I don’t know or a podcast from the station. It happens with other Chicago stations such as ESPN 1000, WLS 890. Only 670 the Score seems to work every time.
I’ve also got the driveway handoff issue. I imagine asking to start a workout works without issue but if I’m in that gray zone will a request to play music or radio which relies on a connection do a better job of queuing and then resolving the request once the signal is back? So often I just experience silence and have to reinitiate the request down the block when the signal finally works itself out.
Can you ask Siri to turn off WIFI on the watch which is one way I was considering dealing with that handoff issue.
I realize much of this can be done onscreen but as I mentioned in another thread on this subject we are in long sleeve, winter jacket mode now in the Chicago area.
OB Siri is a significant improvement for me. I live in a valley where my outdoor 4G signal is 1 to 2 bars. Siri is much more responsive to basic requests on my Series 9 than she was on my Series 5.
I also upgraded from an SE to a 9 hoping on-board Siri would be an improvement. Jury is still out for me. At first, Siri was horrible. Would constantly just hang and not execute commands. I went through all available troubleshooting with Apple and they could not fix it. At that point since I had had the watch less than 14 days (bought it from Apple) I took the option of exchanging it for a replacement. The replacement has been much better, but the issue still recurs occasionally. Now I am able to fix it by rebooting. Sometimes I have to reboot a couple of times. Once it’s ready to go, it works perfectly the rest of the day. I just updated to 10.1.1 a couple of days ago (waited due to seeing all the horror stories about battery capacity suffering) and it’s been flawless since then. Hoping that will continue to be the case. I use Siri on the watch constantly, much more than on my phone.