VIDEO: Google makes voice search iPhone app official

"No buttons, no typing"

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18 November 2008 10:33 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

We'd brought you news this was incoming, but Google has now officially announced its new version of Google mobile app for iPhone, that features voice search.

With the new version of the app, people can conduct a Google search by simply speaking their query into their iPhones.

"Voice search" uses speech recognition technology to transform spoken words into text and then runs the query through Google web search as if it had been typed manually.

Using the iPhone's built-in accelerometer, when the app is turned on, voice search will detect the phone's movement and activate automatically when you want to do a search.

Google says this feature allows you to naturally bring the phone up to your ear and speak your search into the phone, just as if you were talking on the phone.

The iPhone's GPS abilities have also been utilised - users can just type (or speak) a query like "pizza", "movies" or "weather" and will receive results to their location, without having to include a city in the search.

In the video above, Mike LeBeau of the Google mobile team gives an overview of the new app.