Siri squares off against Samsung's S Voice

Siri vs. S Voice
Samsung's new S Voice gets a cage match with Apple's Siri, but neither is a clear victor.

With its recent U.S. Customs delay now safely behind it, Samsung is finally debuting the Galaxy S3 next week, complete with S Voice - the company's own take on the iPhone 4S's virtual assistant, Siri.

But is S Voice an improvement over Apple's solution?

Several websites managed to get their hands on a Samsung Galaxy S3 ahead of next week's June 1 U.S. release.

So, the natural thing to do was to toss its new S Voice mobile assistant into the ring against Siri, the solution Apple introduced with the iPhone 4S last October.

Virtual assistant thunderdome

As it turns out, in their current form, neither Siri nor S Voice may be worthy competitors in a virtual assistant showdown.

When comparing Siri and S Voice, GSM Arena tossed Android app Speaktoit Assistant into the ring.

They discovered that the trio were not that practical, "and interacting with them is often as distracting as doing the task on your own (not to mention slower)."

Another tech gadget site discovered that Siri was indeed faster at responding to queries, while Samsung's S Voice seemed more capable at many tasks, matching Siri for note-taking, searches, weather updates and more.

And another review found that "Siri may be the better assistant for the time being," but noted that S Voice excelled at common tasks like changing a Facebook status or opening Dropbox results, which Siri chokes on.

Via The Verge, GSM Arena, ProductReviews.net