What Happens When You Tell iPhone 4S' Siri That You Love Her? (And Other Weird Things) [Video]

By Casey Chan Oct 11, 2011 7:17 PM 103,936 191

We've seen a really impressive, albeit polished, video look at Siri working on the iPhone 4S already but this video is a little more thorough and a lot more real life-ish. She's still impressively smart but she's not perfect.

When asked "What's your name?", she responded "My name is Siri. But you knew that already". To "How old are you?" she (creepily) responds, "I am not allowed to answer that question." Are you going to bust Chris Hansen on me Siri! She can do funny too, when the person said "I love you" to Siri (which I'm sure she, or it, will hear a lot), she hilariously responds, "I hope you don't say that to those other mobile phones, [NAME]".

But she's not perfect, her voice is verrrrry missy robota and she can't always understand the off the wall questions, like when asked "Can we be friends?" Siri responds, "Sorry. I don't understand, "Can we be friends". What's there to not understand, HMM!?

Take a look at the whole video though, beyond the silly question and answer game, Siri shows off her amazing breadth of knowledge and potential usefulness. I'm not sure I'll ever use Siri but color me impressed. [Apple Master Touch via MacRumors]

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AT&T's New Android Phones: From Awesome (Motorola Atrix 2) to Weird (Samsung DoubleTime) [Android]

By Brent Rose Oct 11, 2011 12:01 AM 25,270 33

Sweet Jesus. AT&T is adding five new Android phones to their portfolio this week. That will bring them up to 19 Android devices in for 2011. The 'droid is strong with this one.

Here they are in order that you probably care about them:

When the original Morola Atrix was announced at CES back in January it had as calling it the best Android phone in the show. It was a real beefcake, and it could power a laptop dock (which we thought was cool for like five seconds). It really was an excellent phone (full review). Truth be told, the Atrix 2 isn't the most monumental upgrade we can image. The biggest difference is that it has AT&T's answer to 4G (HSPA+) which should give you theoretical download speeds of 21Mbps. It's no LTE, but it's significantly faster than 3G. It's camera has gone from 5 megapixels to 8 megapixels, and it's now capable of recording 1080p HD video. And the screen has been stretched to 4.3 inches from the original Atrix's 4 inches. While more screen real estate is good, they both have 960x540 pixels, which means pixel density will actually be worse on the new bigger screen. Hrmm... that sounds a lot like the screen on the Droid Bionic, which we were none too keen on.

Not content to let Verizon have all the Samsung QWERTY keyboard fun today, AT&T brings to the table the Samsung Captivate Glide, a sequel to AT&T's first serious Android phone. It's a 4G (HSPA+) phone with a 4-inch Super AMOLED screen, and a slide-out keyboard. The kicker with this one is that it has a dual-core 1GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor, to Verizon's phone's (the Stratosphere) just has a single-core 1GHz Hummingbird processor. I'll take two cores over one every day, however, balancing out the scorecard is the keyboard on the Stratosphere looks way more usable (five rows of keys vs. four on the Captivate Glide) and Verizon's 4G LTE is faster than AT&T's 4G HSPA+.

This phone is significant because it's only the second Android phone to be available on GoPhone, AT&T's pre-paid network (the first being the LG Thrive). For a pre-pare (which are lower-end, by definition, basically) the AT&T Avail (made by ZTE) ain't bad. It's got a 3.5-inch touch screen, 5- megapixel camera and runs on Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). No mention of processor speed, but if I were a betting man I'd gamble on... 800MHz. We'll update when we know for sure. I will say that this looks like it's the nicest pre-paid phone you can get on GoPhone.

Now, here's where the phones start slowly devolving into weirdness.

"Fat boy on a diet, don't try it. I'll check your ass like a looter in a riot." -Cypress Hill. So, here's an odd duck. The Pantech Pocket has a 4-inch screen and it's pretty slim from back-to-front at only 11.3 millimeters. But check out the width on this thing. Sucker is wiiide. That aside, it's a pretty decent mid-range phone with 4G support, 5MP camera, and Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). Again, no mention of processor here, so I'd bet on 800MHz. Maybe 1GHz.

I bet this poor phone got teased in high school. It's kind of a wimpy weirdo. Whereas the Pantech Pocket was wide, the DoubleTime is thick. That's because it has not one but two screens (both low-resolution 3.2-inch touch screens), and a clam-shell fold-out keyboard. It's got a 600MHz processor, a waifish 260MB of RAM, and it runs Android 2.2 (Froyo). This phone would have been awesome two-and-a-half years ago, but it's pretty terrible by today's standards. It's also got a lot of pink on it. Basically, this is a glorified feature phone aimed at high school girls. There, I said it.

These monkeys should all be out of their respective barrels by Q4. Who's excited about what?

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Fake Google SIMs, Real Weird Bikes, and Other Stories We Didn't Post [Left Behind]

So much news passes before our collective eyes every day that we couldn't possibly cover it all. Mostly because much of it isn't worth covering! But here are a some borderline tidbits we passed on, just in case.

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Samsung's Pure Breeze Launcher for Android Is Really Weird [Video]

Launchers for Android are pretty wonderful, as they can transform your phone into something totally different. There's already awesome launchers like Launcher Pro and ADWLauncher but Samsung wants to throw their hat in the game too.

I know what you're thinking. Samsung? With their freaking TouchWiz UI? Luckily, we dodged a bullet there and it's not going to be TouchWiz. Instead, it's a new interface called Pure Breeze that's, um, a little weird. The emphasis of Pure Breeze is to manage your applications with groups. On launch, it's a long vertical list of apps that isn't side scrollable, you throw the apps you want to organize into the bottom bar (which is side scrollable). There's also a floating "home screen", called The Kite, which is always easily accessible (and the place you can store your favoritest apps and widgets).

'm not sure if I like these small tweaks (I'm so used to side scrolling homescreen on Android phones) but I just know I feel really weird using them. [Android Market via TechCrunch]

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Working Out Barefoot with the Adidas Adipure Trainers Is Really Weird (But Good for You?) [Shoes]

I'm wearing the new Adidas adipure Trainers right now. They're barefoot shoes. My toes are spread apart (which is good), my feet are closer to the ground (which is great) and I feel like an ass (which is normal). Adidas says it'll make me a better athlete.

Though the popularity of barefoot running shoes has been well documented, these Adidas barefoot shoes aren't like those. They're the first barefoot models exclusively targeted for the gym.

So how do they feel? Actually good. The shoe's upper is similar to low profile water shoes (better quality, natch)—elastic, stretchy and hardly noticeable around the top part of your foot. I do, however, feel a bit of restriction around my toes. The ethylene and vinyl acetate midsoles—essentially a ton of foam cells that contain air—are perfect though. When your foot lands, the foam compresses and the air gets pushed out, then sucked back in. Unlike Nike Frees which focus on re-creating a barefoot (read: less shock absorbent) feel, the Adidas Adipures provide a cushion so you don't feel every jagged edge of the ground. But it doesn't try to overcompensate on that cushioning, so when you're doing exercises like box jumps you'll feel your toes and feet searching for balance, trying to grab the ground. It's like doing brand new core exercises for your feet—working the important little muscles that mean more than the big swooping ones.

But even with all these athlete-approved, trainer-recommended benefits, they're still unabashedly weird. Beyond all possibilities of weird, really. And to that end I say who cares? It's the gym, form follows function. They fit a specific purpose: attempting to improve your posture and alignment so you can get more out of your workouts. You'll find yourself searching for balance and using muscles you never knew existed. One thing: probably not ideal for those who predominantly run.

They're out on November 1st for 90 bucks. [Adidas]

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