Siri Service Resumes, But Apple Silent on Outage

The most talked about feature of the iPhone 4S, a voice-controlled intelligent assistant called Siri, experienced a major outage yesterday, and although service is now back online, Apple has kept mum about the reason for the problem.

The outage began yesterday, with users taking to Twitter to ask if other iPhone 4S owners were experiencing the issue. Users reported that they were getting the message that Siri could not connect to the network, despite them having a data connection. Siri requires communication with Apple servers to complete its tasks, so a failure in service leaves Siri unable to perform even the most basic undertaking. 

Yet, today users have reported that the voice-controlled system is functional once again. Apple has yet to comment on the outage, though customer service representatives at the company supposedly confirmed issues with overloaded servers. 

Still a Beta
Siri is still in “beta” mode, as Apple repeatedly stated when the company introduced the a.i. feature in October. Currently, the extent of the service depends on where the phone is being used, with U.S. users appearing to get the most out of the feature. Issues with accents and mapping have been raised, though, according to the Apple website, access to local businesses and mapping information will be available internationally in 2012.

Apple's latest smartphone has also come under criticism recently for its shortlived battery, which has been said to lose almost 15% every hour.