“Sara” Is Siri For The Rest Of Us

Check out the video above on how to install Sara on your specific idevice (this one shows the install using the iPhone 4)

The most interesting come on to jailbreak your iDevice is all the customizations and tweaks you can install in it to really personalize your device and Cydia is a treasure trove of every tweak your hack-loving heart desires. With the release of the Absinthe jailbreak, it has now become even easier to jailbreak any idevice on Apple’s iOS 5 including the elusive iPhone 4S and the iPad 2.

My recently jailbroken iPad 2 was missing something though and I knew exactly was it was: Siri.  As we all know, Siri is an iPhone 4S exclusive which left us non-iPhone 4S users a bit dejected and forgotten. So we turn to the ever-reliable hacking community to come up with Siri clones which will work on our non-iPhone 4S devices. Besides, no respectable jailbreaker will not install (or at least try to) Siri on his/her jailbroken iDevices even if it’s only one of Siri’s siblings or cousins.

Up to now there has only been one very successful Siri clone available which has a very straightforward way of install and that is Spire. The internet is abound with Spire installation guides and tutorials on how to get Spire on your device and eventually make it work by setting up a Siri proxy server so that Spire will communicate with Apple’s servers and you, of course.  But up to now, there hasn’t been any stable proxy server for Spire to communicate with so Spire’s usability has been somewhat limited.  Thus Spire has never achieved the very polished execution Siri had been offering from inception. Lucky you if you were able to make Spire work even for a short time and I wouldn’t want to mention using Spire abroad since Siri have had major trouble herself when she’s out of her Stateside element.

It’s no wonder developers out there are still crunching codes to get Siri clones working on the rest of our iDevices.  One of the more promising Siri-wannabe out there right now is from a Vietnamese dev team called (you’re going to love this) Sara. Sara is everything Siri is and even more.

Described by its developer as having an open brain, Sara is extremely versatile which the user can train to learn new commands aside from the built-in ones.  The developer also said that plug-ins can be easily created by the hacking community to further enhance Sara’s capabilities. Even now, Sara’s features are already impressive specially its ability to scan bar and QR codes and find establishments and businesses nearby that has the item and can make comparisons for easy shopping.

But the most outstanding feature of Sara right now is its ability to work outside of the States and it works great!  Just installed it on my iPad 2 and instantly got connected.  I ask Sara where I was and she promptly showed me my location. Really cool!  Sara even recognized my somewhat unfamiliar foreign-sounding accent and she gave me very accurate answers to my questions.  Sara was a small download, very easy to install, almost no configuration and best of all, does not need a complicated proxy server setup to work.

Sara was developed was Nobita and can be found here. To get it on your device, just add http://isoftjsc.com to your Cydia repo, refresh and download the right version of Sara for your specific device and you’re good to go.  Or you can download the Sara deb file (for  iPhone 3GS/iPhone 4/iPod 4g – iPad 2) and install it using iFile on your device. By the way, I believe Sara even works for older firmwares (less than iOS 5) so that would be something awesome to see.

Of course your iDevice must have a microphone in order to talk to Sara so I guess the original iPod Touch is not included here.  Anyway, for those of you with microphones on your iDevices and firmwares less than iOS 5, you can check out Sara and tell us how she may your day.