Apple fixes Siri's Lumia 900 recommendation

Apple has issued a patch for the Siri voice assistant on the iPhone 4S, in order to stop it from inadvertently recommending a rival product.

The Next Web reported late last week that when asked the question, ‘what is the best smartphone ever?’, Siri would answer the Nokia Lumia 900.

The surprising result wasn’t due to an infiltration job by Nokia’s dev department, but simply a reflection of the number of good reviews of the Lumia 900 on Wolfram Alpha, the ‘answer engine’ Siri uses to perform many of its searches.

Even so, Apple was understandably not happy about it, and has updated the software to offer the same responses as it does to similar questions such as ‘what is the best smartphone?’, which include ‘the one you’re holding’ and ‘you’re kidding, right?’

Despite seven months on the market, Siri is still technically in beta, meaning there could be plenty more surprises still to come for people who ask the right (or wrong) questions.