The Nokia-Microsoft collaboration that is the Lumia recently came out, standing up as Nokia and Microsoft’s answer to the models and featured software/OSes sported by the two brand’s respective competitors.
Boasting the combined hardware experience of Nokia and Microsoft’s understanding of software bits for mobiles, it is too soon to tell if the Lumia does stand to be the next industry dominator, given its relatively new entry into the game.
But a number of “confrontations” have been ongoing, between the Lumia and its competition.
The whole “wait… there are other phones?” “issue” is one of those.
Siri, Apple’s famed voice operated assistant, turned in a lot of attention recently. When asked “what’s the best smartphone out there?” or “what is the best smartphone ever?”, Siri would say “Nokia’s Lumia 900”.
This response was reported to be the norm for some time, which was then later “changed” with Siri now responding “wait… there are other phones?”
Apple has yet to confirm anything about initiating the change, but Nokia has been reported to accuse Apple of “overriding the software”, to sway Siri’s advocacy of the iPhone’s competitor.
As a voice navigated/operated search assistant, Siri works via computational searches, with the Wolfram Alpha environment as its “information pool” in yielding answers or search results.
In the case of “What’s the best smartphone out there?”, Siri would tap in to Wolfram Alpha, which in turn would source information, basing them on comments and reviews, along with assessments collected by retailer sources. Reports indicate that the “Nokia’s Lumia 900” response was based on reviews and comments from the Best Buy website.
Though far from being an actual meltdown initiating a war of apocalyptic proportions, the stir caused by Siri’s flaky response reminds users of just how much crowd-sourced information can be manipulated, and how much personal preference remains to be the key when asking about what’s the best of anything.
