Google voice search finally arrives

Tuesday, November 18th, 2008

Google’s had a dedicated search application for the iPhone for a while now, but the long-rumoured voice-recognition update has belatedly arrived in iTunes after a few hiccups last week. If you haven’t tried it yet I’d strongly recommend it as a way to pass a dull few hours – it’s livened up my morning no end.

Now, it’s important to realise that this isn’t a high-end dictation program, with training exercises to improve its accuracy and accomodate regional accents.

It’s just a basic free app, created and (we assume) trained in-house by Google’s Californian engineers – when enabling the feature you’re even warned it works best for “North American English accents”. It doesn’t speak Geordie yet, then.

To use it, you simply load up the app, hold the phone to your ear and wait for the beep, then speak. (more…)