We had previously reported that Samsung's updates to the Galaxy S III removed universal search. Yesterday, the company issued a statement that the removal was inadvertent and not as a result of the ongoing patent lawsuit between Apple and Samsung. They said that they would roll out an update to fix it within a few days.

However, Samsung has started rolling out the update within a few hours. Samsung's statement is below:

The most recent software upgrade for the Galaxy S III in the UK included the inadvertent removal of the universal search function. Samsung will provide the correct software upgrade within the next few days.

The update is a 5MB download and can be installed over the air or via Kies. The update is labeled I9300XXBLG8 and does in fact restore universal search to the Samsung Galaxy S III device. If you don't have the update quite yet, you should within a day or two.