Although it’s not currently available in the iOS 5 developer beta, a new leak has indicated a curious voice control feature called Assistant could be making its way into the mysterious iPhone 5 when it launches.
Sorry, “if” it launches, since there’s been nothing but rumour and rampant speculation about the next version of the iPhone basically since the last one launched.
But! On to the Assistant thing that will probably/definitely be exclusive to the iPhone 5. It’s based on the Siri technology that Apple acquired when it bought that company, and will do a whole lot more than just haphazardly dial contacts when you say people’s names as the current iPhone does now.
Instead, the theoretical iPhone 5 will convert speech to text, scour the data on your phone to make specific location-based recommendations for your queries, and use crowd-sourcing to fine tune the system and reduce errors (after all the privacy snafus associated with the iPhone 4 and Facebook we have to asume this with permission). [BusinessInsider]