I never got Siri to work that well. I found it's had problems calling and some of it's standard features. It's still on my iPhone, there's no way to remove, but I've found Google Assistant to work better. Plus, the Google Home integration is nice.
I use Siri for almost every task that doesn’t require me to physically look at my screen, e.g. reading, watching a video or typing. The #1 and #2 problems I have with Siri recognizing my input are in order: the quality of the mic I’m using and the ambient noise level in whatever environment I’m in. The #3 problem is the quality of my network connection because it won’t work if it can’t contact Apple.
In my experience, AirPods are the best Siri input device I own. EarPods are a distant second, and the built in mic on phone is a not very distant third. It is effectively unusable on my laptop’s built in mic.
The ambient noise basically means I can’t use Siri in noisy places, and I’m typically not inclined to. I might raise my voice a little if I’m putting in a podcast outside and it is windy.
#3 means disabling WiFi when I leave my house, until I’m in a location with a solid WiFi connection, in part because I make use of my cable WiFi. If I have no service and no WiFi then I have no Siri, not even to set a timer.
Beyond that, I find the basic feature set adequate, but not comprehensive. Siri shortcuts doubled Siri’s usefulness and I only use them for three or four apps.
That said, I appreciate Siri’s presence because it does enable me to leave my phone in my pocket a lot more than I used to, so there will occasionally be a week where I didn’t spend more than an hour or two looking at my phone’s screen the entire week (not per day, per week), with 90% of this time spent reading a book. Observing my friends’ obsessions and work habits, I appear to be the outlier in that regard.
