Christmas came early for some Apple iPhone users. Google Dec. 9 said the
latest iteration of the Google Mobile App for iPhone was approved and is
now available in the App Store.
The new version shows more results at once and opens Web pages from the
results within the app, rather than making users jump to a separate Safari
browser window. Google also made its Bells and Whistles visual settings—which
let users color the Google Mobile App in red, taupe or even heliotrope—more
visible.
Launched last year, Bells and Whistles was previously accessible for users
of the Google Mobile App for iPhone by going to the Settings tab, scrolling to
the bottom and swiping upward until the Bells and Whistles menu appeared.
Clicking into this menu let users change its color, enable monkey or chicken
noises, select live waveform for when users talk, and open links in the app.
Bells and Whistles is no longer hidden until users swipe.
"If you're on a faster iPhone, like the iPhone 3GS, you may want to try
the live waveform setting, which turns on, as the name suggests, a moving
waveform when you search by voice," said Google software engineer Alastair Tse.
iPhone users of the Google Mobile App can also make their search by voice
more granular by choosing their accent. The app supports English, Mandarin and
Japanese, but an Australian can improve the recognition accuracy by selecting
Australian in the Voice Search settings.
The new app came two days after Google Vice President of Engineering Vic
Gundotra unveiled several new mobile search perks at a Google search
event.
These included the aforementioned Google search by voice in Japanese; What's
Nearby, a location-based service in Google Maps for mobile 3.3 that lets users
find nearby businesses; and Google Goggles, which lets users trigger Google
search queries by taking pictures with their Android smartphone camera.
Goggles, which can be seen in pictures here, was easily the most
significant of the mobile moves Google made at the event, and it worked well
when tested by eWEEK on a Motorola Droid.
But one of the salient questions after the announcement was whether or not
Google would hoard the app for Android or free it up for other smartphone
platforms, including iPhone, Palm Web OS, RIM and Symbian.
A Google spokesperson told eWEEK:
"We are interested in bringing Goggles to a broad set of users, and it
is our intention to quickly develop Goggles for the most popular mobile handsets
and platforms. However, we have nothing to announce at this time."
With more than 13 million iPhones sold and counting, Google Goggles on the
iPhone could be a popular application, but it won't happen unless Google builds
it and Apple blesses it.
Enterprise Mobility News & Reviews 
