Unavailability of navigation and speech to text services on iPhone 3GS and 4 is potential fragmentation – Part 1

Apple released the new version of iOS 6 at the annual Worldwide Developers’ Conference (WWDC) on June 11. The new version has more than 400 features added to the previous version, some for iPad, some for iPhone and others for both.

However, that is the base tier of segregation of features. Further probe into the details let us know that Apple has divided or simply limited most of the features to the latest iOS devices like iPhone 4S and the third-generation iPad.

This deliberate action on Apple’s part has fragmented iOS devices in a very obnoxious way. There are features that are dedicated for iPhone and there are features dedicated to iPad, like Siri coming to the third-gen iPad with Retina Display.

Only the hardware differences in these devices were confusing enough for developers that Apple has aggravated the issue furthermore. Currently, an app developer on iPhone platform has to take into account the hardware differences in iPhone 3GS, 4 and 4S, the three versions Apple is officially selling. Now iOS has created a delta of differences in the software compatibility that it might become tough for developers to keep tabs.

Furthermore, there are some applications that are available only on the latest models of iPhone and iPad like turn-by-turn navigation and Siri. Not even the voice-to-text recognition software is available on 3GS and 4. According to Apple, the hardware of these devices is not powerful enough to run these applications. The iPad 2 does not get Siri but only voice-to-text app. However, 3GS and 4 do not even get that software.

This gives Android phone owner the bragging rights as even the low-end Android device gets the voice recognition software, and this has been going for more than three years.

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Posted by Usman Khalid on Jun 16 2012. Filed under Sci-Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.