Apple Siri vs. Google Jelly Bean

One of the big enhancements in the Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) operating system update that Google announced on June 27 is improved voice recognition in search. You can now ask your Android phone questions in a natural way--meaning you no longer have to sound like a robot to get answers. We wondered which service is better at answering questions: Android's Voice Search or Apple's much-touted Siri. To test the services, we assembled a list of 17 questions or commands, and asked them of a Galaxy Nexus running Jelly Bean and an iPhone 4S running iOS 5.

Here's a breakdown of how well each phone handled each question or task.

Winner: Tie Android seems to do better on questions relating to navigation and maps, but Siri is superior at finding places to eat and playing music. It will be interesting to see what other improvements Apple will make to Siri when iOS 6 launches in the fall, and whether Google can iron out the quirks in Android Jelly Bean before it releases in mid-July.