IF YOU have a burning question, you can now ask your iPhone. The digital assistant Siri packs more than a bit of attitude. Ask it what the meaning of life is, and you’ll get a range of answers, from “I find it off that you would ask this of an inanimate object” to the inevitable “42”.

When it’s not being sarcastic, Siri is actually quite useful. It can compose e-mails, send text messages and add important reminders to your diary. And even though it’s not really customised for the Irish accent just yet, it only failed to recognise one or two requests over several hours.

Besides Siri, the iPhone 4S has been refined in other ways too. The handset is now powered by the dual-core A5 chip, the one used in the iPad 2, making it a bit faster and more powerful than previous handsets. The camera, meanwhile, has been upgraded from 5 megapixels in the iPhone 4 to 8 megapixels for the latest version, and comes with an improved lens that allows you to shoot in lower light conditions.

The result is better photos than you’ve come to expect from the phone and it also has the ability to record high-definition video.