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Siri swears, Samsung dominates in phone news video

Watch our video round-up to catch up on the week's top phone news, including the latest iPhone 5 and Samsung Galaxy S3 rumours.

Katie Collins Senior European Correspondent
Katie a UK-based news reporter and features writer. Officially, she is CNET's European correspondent, covering tech policy and Big Tech in the EU and UK. Unofficially, she serves as CNET's Taylor Swift correspondent. You can also find her writing about tech for good, ethics and human rights, the climate crisis, robots, travel and digital culture. She was once described a "living synth" by London's Evening Standard for having a microchip injected into her hand.
Katie Collins
3 min read

While most of the country has been slumped in a turkey-induced haze for the last week or so, a torrent of juicy phone news has been pouring in, as thick and fast as the gravy over our Christmas dinners.

Fortunately we managed to take a long enough break from gorging ourselves silly to catch it all, but if you've missed out, take a look at our video round-up above to gobble it all up in one go.

First and foremost, some crazy phone stats have emerged over the festive period: an estimated 6.8 million iOS and Android were activated on Christmas day alone, with 242 million apps downloaded from the Apple Store and Android Market over the same 24 hour period.

It looks as though Samsung is set to continue on its quest to dominate the smart phone universe this year with its Galaxy range. Samsung had a stonkingly successful 2011, and over Christmas reported it had shipped 1 million units of the super-sized Galaxy Note. If the rumours are true, we expect the Galaxy S3, follow-up to last year's award-winning S2, to be launched at Mobile World Congress in February.

The S3 isn't the only highly anticipated phone for 2012 though -- Apple's yet-to-be-released iPhone 5 was the second-fastest rising search term last year. If you're hoping to lay your hands on one you'd better have the patience of a saint, as it's not expected to launch until the autumn. Oh, and when it does arrive, it might be coated in rubber. Don't say we didn't warn you.

In other news, Porsche and RIM have come up with a crafty trick to stop the great unwashed getting their grubby mitts on their posh new smart phone, the £1,275 P'9981: they will be selling it exclusively in top London department store, Harrods.

If you're an HTC owner and are fed-up with its Sense UI interface, you can now use the company's own bootloader to overhaul the appearance of your phone's interface. Mind how you go though -- there are more than a few risks involved, not to mention that fiddling of this nature will void your warranty.

Finally, a tale of woe to remind you that the season of goodwill and joy to all men is well and truly over. Charlie Le Quesne -- a mere slip of lad, only 12 years of age -- wandered into his local Tesco in Coventry, only to be subject to a tirade of abuse from none other than Siri, the personal assistant on the iPhone 4S.

"How many people are there in the world?" Charlie innocently wondered aloud.

"Shut the f*** up you ugly t***," Siri replied.

Perhaps the Apple PA wasn't happy about all the overtime it was subject to over the Christmas break, but whatever its excuse, if it wasn't in already in Coventry, we'd send it there ourselves to punish it for its foul mouth.

What do you make of all the latest phone news? Were you one of the lucky millions who activated a sparkly new Android or iOS device on Christmas day? Perhaps you're holding out for the S3 or iPhone 5 later this year? Let us know in the comments below or on our Facebook page.