Google app for iPhone - Review

The latest Google Mobile App available on the Appstore is a major update to the previous one. The major feature of this release is Voice Search. This option is not enabled by default. You can go to the settings screen of the app to enable and customize. Google has successfully coupled the Location based locale results with an individual’s voice search queries. Most of the time, the results are accurate.

To start the Voice Search, you just start the application and then hold the iPhone to your ear. Start speaking the search keyword(s), after you hear a beep sound. The results will appear next on the applications screen.

What is Good?

The Voice Search accuracy is almost acceptable. If you are a non-American, you have no luck!. But Google has promised other language/accent support. These would be server-side upgrades Google will be making independently and progressively.The voice search also works well for searching images, Wikipedia, News and Maps.

What is required?

The search results are not voice navigable further. It would be very nice to have Voice equivalents to the insanely useful Google Keyboard Shortcuts.

Apart from the Voice Search, Google Mobile App for iPhone also features custom domain support. If you have opted to host email/calendaring/document storage/instant communications with Google, accessing them on iPhone is really quick now. Google Mobile App gives you quick shortcuts to access them further on iPhone’s Mobile Safari. I especially liked the Google Talk Gadget performing well over an EDGE connection inside Safari. It would have been much better if Google opted to open these shortcuts within the application itself, instead of launching a separate Safari window.

Overall I am impressed with the app for now. I look forward to the further updates for a more integrated application – aggregating all of the Google Services.