Uh oh! Something tells me Siri is about to get called into Tim Cook's office.
Windows Phone blog wmpoweruser.com asked Siri "What is the best cell phone ever?" and got a surprising response from the iPhone 4S' defining feature: The intelligent voice assistant answered that the best cell phone ever was, in fact, the Nokia Lumia 900, by Siri's reckoning. We tried it out ourselves and got the same result:
Zooey Deschanel is not going to be happy about this! Hope she enjoys her tomato soup, though.
Siri became an Internet sensation back in October when it shipped with the iPhone 4S, thanks to some quirky answers she delivered to the creators of the "Sh*t That Siri Says" blog. Things have been a bit rockier for Siri since then: The voice assistant is the subject of two class action lawsuits in America, with the plaintiffs complaining that Apple's advertisements unfairly exaggerate Siri's capabilities.
(Not that Apple is complaining: The company saw record smartphone sales following the release of the iPhone 4S, no doubt bolstered by the novelty of its killer Siri feature).
Still, it has to be a little disappointing that your killer feature is actively rating the competitor's product over your own -- especially when that competitor has been bashing you in its "Smartphone Beta Test" ads over the past month. Television commercials for Nokia's Lumia 900 have knocked the iPhone for its past antenna issues, its inability to be used in direct sunlight, and the fact that everyone and his daughter owns one; and now, to make matters worse, Siri is recommending it over the iPhone 4S. Turncoat!
Now, to be fair, Siri doesn't always respond with "Nokia Lumia 900" when you ask what the best cell phone is. Sometimes she says that "[y]ou're holding it"; other times with "You're kidding, right?" Those clever answers are programmed in by Siri's engineers; the Nokia Lumia 900 answer comes from Wolfram Alpha, a data-driven search engine that Siri often consults for more mathematical or statistical queries.
In other words: If you want Siri's opinion, she'll tell you the iPhone 4S is the best phone; if you want the facts, she'll tell you it's the Nokia Lumia 900.
Ouch.
We asked Siri a few other questions about the best tech gear, but she faithfully favored Apple on every query besides the one about smartphones. Her favorite computer is the Apple Macintosh; her favorite laptop is made by Apple. When we asked, "What is the best MP3 player ever?" Siri responded, "iPod + iTunes = Musical Bliss." (No love for the Zune?)
Granted, all of these answers came from Siri's knowledge base, and not from Wolfram Alpha. If you search Wolfram online for the best laptop, the search engine will tell you to go with a Samsung. But we couldn't get Siri to do a Wolfram search on laptops or computers no matter how many times we asked.
So, in the end, how does this affect the way that the Lumia 900 is rated against the iPhone 4S, or whether you should buy one over the other? We'll go to Siri for the final word:
You can read the HuffPost review of the Nokia Lumia 900 here (we like it!). We've also profiled the iOS and Android operating systems here and here, with a look at the Windows Phone OS coming out soon. Stay tuned.
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Posted: 05/11/2012 3:11 pm Updated: 05/11/2012 3:12 pm