Future of iPhone 4S’s killer feature, Siri, under question in Canada

When Apple debuted the iPhone 4S in its Oct. 4 presentation, there was one feature that had everyone sit up and take notice. In the words of Phil Schiller, the senior vice president of worldwide product marketing at Apple:

"What we really want to do is just talk to our device and we want to talk to it any way we'd like."

Meet Siri, the smart "personal assistant" that responds to voice commands in the new iPhone 4S. In the demonstration given by Scott Forstall, senior vice president of iOS Software at Apple, Siri's many functions were shown for the first time. From asking for a reminder about important dates, like the one shown in the picture to the right, to Siri telling you whether or not you need a raincoat, it seems like being able to control multiple functions on the iPhone 4s could be what convinces consumers to upgrade.

But will that functionality come to a Canadian market, too?

If you check out Apple's Canadian website for the iPhone, Siri isn't prominently featured anywhere, which has left some people wondering if it will be excluded from the list of countries getting it, which currently includes the U.S., Germany and France.

In short, yes, Canada will be getting Siri, but it won't work for everyone. According to a Toronto Sun article, Siri will work on Canadian iPhone 4S devices when they go on sale Oct. 14. The available languages will include English optimized for the U.S., U.K. and Australia, as well as French and German. That means Canadians won't be able to select Canadian English or Canadian French as you can with with most other Apple products.

The available localized versions of English and French should work for most Canadians, although heavy accents may have a problem initially. But the important thing is if you want to ask your iPhone 4S to read you a text message, it should be able to understand you and you should be able to understand it.

The iPhone 4S comes to Canada Oct. 14, starting at $649.

(Screengrab from apple.com)