We’ve already covered the application ‘Sara’ from Cydia, but it has been getting a lot of updates (and bugs). For those of you who are not aware Sara is a ‘learning assistant for older devices’. It can do things Siri can’t, such as install plugins and widgets on a non-Siri supported device, such as my iPod Touch 4G. It comes as an app, and can be assigned to open when you hold the Home button for a couple seconds if you have the Activator tweak.
It also has some tweaks in the official repo (isoftjsc.com) that adds a mic icon to the keyboard, and allows you to dictate your notes. However, this is extremely slow, and is not recommended, although a future update could fix it. Sara also has plugin and widget support. Widgets aren’t currently available, but you can see the button in the Settings by saying ‘Settings’.
It can also install different plugins, to add on to what it can do, such as a plugin called ‘RepeatMe’. You couldn’t normally tell it to repeat you, but with the plugin, you can! In the repo, there is also a package called ‘Sara SKD kit build x.x.x’, which you can install to create your own plugins and add more things to what Sara can do/say! And for the Russians, there is an alternate app to Sara named ‘SaraVM’. It is just Sara translated to Russian.
So now the bad parts: there are lots of bugs that will make it crash every time you ask it certain things. In my case, it was ‘Settings’, which caused me a lot a grief. Also, if you get to Settings, you can crash it by clicking the incorrect thing. Some of the graphics are broken and the package stops installing at ‘Configuring Sara build x.x.x‘. This may be part of the problem.
And one last issue, there is no Spire support. The app is comparable, however, but you can’t connect Spire to Sara’s servers. Although I bet if you looked in the right places, you could find out how to do it.
Want more information? Visit the official website. Additionally if you would like to install the Sara Siri clone you can add the developers repo http://isoftjsc.com through Cydia.
[Written by Gabriel Simmer]
huge typo in the last few sentances
when installing be aware of the repos mass quantity of adds that will pop up