The best smartphone? According to Siri, it's not the iPhone 4S Ask your iPhone 4S what the best smartphone is, and you'll get a su...

The best smartphone? According to Siri, it's not the iPhone 4S

Ask your iPhone 4S what the best smartphone is, and you'll get a surprising answer.

Our hands-down favorite feature of the iPhone 4S is Siri, the built-in digital personal assistant. Not only can Siri help you with mundane tasks like checking the weather and gathering directions, but she can even handle some highly advanced tasks, like adjusting your home thermostat and starting your car. A while back, we put Siri through the paces and took a video of some of her most sassy responses.

There's one interesting thing we missed: What happens when you ask Siri her opinion as to what the best smartphone is? Siri's recommendation isn't the Apple iPhone 4S, as you may expect. It's the Nokia Lumia 900, a Windows Phone 7 device.

To be sure, the Lumia 900 is a great phone — we loved our hands-on time with it at this year's CES. But why does Siri like it so much? The answer lies in how Siri answers questions posed to it: She uses Wolfram Alpha, which pulls its answers from web searches. And since the Lumia 900 is so highly rated by users, Siri is tricked into slighting her Cupertino creators.

It's worth noting that given the way Wolfram Alpha works — it uses the constantly updating internet to get its answers — the response to the question "What is the best smartphone ever?" may change from day to day. Give it a try for yourself!

(Agencies)