One of the problems with digital assistants is that you usually need an internet connection to use them. This is because the digital assistants need to send your request to a remote server where your voice is processed in order to understand what you say. This is why sometimes it can take a while for things to happen.
However, after years of making Siri online-only, Apple announced at WWDC 2021 that with iOS 15, they will be making Siri usable without an internet connection. However, Siri won’t be taken completely offline. For more complex requests, Siri will still need an internet connection. After all, how can you ask Siri for information about the news if there is no internet to fetch that information, right?
There will be some tasks that Siri will be able to do offline like setting timers, switching apps, and more, things that wouldn’t necessarily need an internet connection to perform. We expect that maybe over time, Apple will introduce more offline capabilities to Siri that would improve the overall speed of the digital assistant.
iOS 15 is expected to be released this coming fall alongside the new iPhones. Interestingly, it seems that Apple will be making iOS 15 and future major iOS updates optional, where users can choose to stick with the current version of iOS and instead receive security updates.
Filed in . Read more about iOS, Ios 15, Siri, Wwdc and Wwdc 2021.