Apple Senior VP of Worldwide Product Marketing Philip Schiller
Philip Schiller announces Siri the digital assistant at Apple's Let's Talk iPhone event, Oct.4, 2011. Reuters

iPhone 4S' best new feature is said to be the voice recognition technology known as Siri, and it's supposed to be able to understand you well enough to create text messages and emails and even read them back to you.

This type of speech to text software has been tried in many places before, but Apple seems to have found the right formula for it this time. Apple's version is based on technology they bought up in 2010 from a company called Siri. Before Apple made that purchase however, Siri had launched its own app, which until last week was available in the app store.

Apple has pulled the app, having integrated it into the Siri feature in iPhone 4S, but there are still two other voice recognition apps in the app store. They are both free and are called Vlingo and Dragon Go!

First, Dragon Go! works with more apps and websites than Vlingo. If you ask Dragon Go! to find reviews of burger joints, it can go to Yelp! and look it up. Vlingo is limited to text messages, emails, maps, calls and basic search items. Vlingo, however, has settings for both American English and U.K. English, where Dragon Go! doesn't have language preferences. iPhone 4S' Siri feature will have English, French, and German options.

Siri can read your questions back, and it can read your messages for you. Dragon and Vlingo can't do those things. Siri can also take dictation in a more robust way than just a few sparse phrases like the other apps. The Siri standalone app was pulled from the app store, and anyone who already had it got a notification message from the app I've been replaced! The new Siri is even smarter and better-looking than me, and waiting for you on the iPhone 4S. I'll be leaving for home Oct. 15th.

Tell us in the comments if you were happy with the Siri Assistant app or if you are stoked to get the iPhone 4S to try out the new Siri feature.

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