Google Mobile App for iPhone Finally Gets Its Voice

After an interminable (not really, but it was sort of ridiculous how people reacted to the delay) wait, the Google Mobile App for iPhone with new voice recognition features showed up on the App Store. Strangely, at first it displayed the version number of the old version, though if you tried to download it, you would get the new version.

As I wrote previously, it had been expected to appear on Monday.

The change in 0.3.142 is voice search. You bring the phone to your ear, the search app recognizes that via the accelerometer, you say a search term, and the app sends it to Google servers, where it's run through voice recognition and sent back to the phone as a query.

The accelerometer feature is cool; but hey, what about those of us who use Bluetooth exclusively? States with hands-free laws would frown on "raising the phone to your ear."

And yes, for those of you who are privacy-sensitive, obviously its yet another way for Google to collect user data --- but oh, well.

The big complaint I've seen in forums: while you can search for a contact, the app won't dial it once found. Of course, I mentioned that the first time I wrote about it, but as I also said, there are plenty of other voice dial apps --- and some are free. It would have been really nice if they'd added the functionality, but I'm not going to diss them for it. After all, the voice search aspect alone is really cool.

Still not sure you want this (it's free, remember!)? Watch this video to see it in action: