The new version of iOS arrives loaded with news in many parts of the system, and Siri is one of them. Apple’s assistant has changed inside and out on iOS 14, and it was a necessary change. Although it seems that Siri’s evolution has stagnated in recent years, iOS 14 is a new breath of fresh air.
The news of Siri in iOS 14 are visual and at the level of knowledge, since according to Apple they have multiplied by 20 the questions that it is capable of answering in the last three years, however, it must continue to evolve to reach Google Assistant or Alexa.
The main news of Siri in iOS 14
Siri is now capable of doing more things in iOS 14, and it will not hinder us so much when we consult something, these are the improvements that come with iOS 14.
New interface
It is undoubtedly what draws the most attention from Siri in iOS 14, the wizard will no longer interrupt you by covering the entire screen, it will now appear in a small circle at the bottom of the device. The responses we ask Siri will appear as cards on the screen.
The only downside to this interface, which is present in at least the first beta, is that you can’t interact with the screen when Siri is open. That is, Siri continues to interrupt what you are doing, and this is quite annoying on devices like the iPad. In macOS, curiously, Siri does not interrupt you and you can ask him anything while you follow your own, hopefully, Apple will improve this in future versions.
It won’t answer with voice if you don’t want
Apple has implemented a very interesting novelty with the responses of Siri in iOS 14. From the settings, we can configure that Siri only responds with the voice when we activate it by “Hey, Siri”, as long as we have the silent mode activated. If we hold down the side button Siri will not speak, only the text will appear on the screen. This is great since there may be times when we don’t want you to speak to us.
To activate this new way of interacting with Siri, you must go to Settings> Siri> Siri Answers on your iPhone. In the voice response section select only with “Hey Siri”.
More natural language
Siri has evolved over the years towards a much more natural language and with iOS 14 this function will improve in different English-speaking regions (Australia, India, Ireland, South Africa, United Kingdom) and with French, German, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese.
In addition, phrase translation using Siri has also been improved, Apple has expanded the list of supported translation languages to more than 65 different languages in iOS 14 .
Apple Maps has a very useful feature called Share Arrival. By putting a route in Maps we can share the arrival with any of our contacts and you can see at all times where we are going and how much time we have left to reach our destination.
Now we can access this function and share it from Siri, so we will not have to distract ourselves by touching anything on the iPhone. Our contacts will receive a notification to see the route of our trip updated in real-time. If the contact doesn’t have at least iOS 13.1 or has an Android phone, they will receive a message with the expected arrival time and automatic updates if it changes.
Best answers
Although this is quite relative, it seems that Siri is now capable of answering numerous questions, 20 times more compared to 3 years ago. Apple reported that it is now able to better analyze the web for these answers. However, it is true that it is not something exclusive to iOS 14, Siri probably improves in a similar way in the rest of the operating systems.
Siri continues to improve, although there is still a long way to go. Apple’s assistant is still unable to follow a more or less stable conversation and without offering as many answers as its competitors, hopefully, we will soon see an important leap in terms of its capacity.