In what appears to be a little known development from yesterdays Galaxy S III Jelly Bean update, Samsung looks to have snuck local search back into their TouchWiz software. Local Search, if you’ll recall was removed from the Galaxy S III in response to Apple’s lawsuits courtesy of a maintenance update this past August. The update deleted the option for local search on all T-Mobile Galaxy S III devices. Now, it looks to be completely restored, though there’s no mention of it on T-Mobile’s support page. We’ve yet to verify with T-Mobile or Samsung on local search, but if this holds we’re thrilled to see its return.

Local search allows for the search app to look for files on the phone, like contacts or apps when users attempt a web search from the pre-loaded search app. This is an awesome feature for Android and it’s removal back in August was disheartening. Seeing it return is wonderful.