. But to avail this unique “Google Voice Search” option, you should have a Nokia Smartphone.
Google on Monday launched the Google Mobile App (GMA), which will enable the user to access all the key Google applications.
As Alok Goyal, Product Manager, Google India, explained to Deccan Herald, “Once you open the Google Voice Search, you can reach other applications like Search, Orkut, Maps and News."
The free-to-download application, which initiates a search when the user speaks the search term into the phone, provides almost everything a person on the move would like to learn -cricket updates, nearest restaurants, local business listings etc.
They can also use the application to access Google Search for virtually any information. Since most Nokia phones have just 12 keys, which users have to press multiple times to get the letters, Alok said the speech-to-text interface has been introduced.
"The technology is good enough to understand most things we say in Indian English," he pointed out.
Fine-tuned
"The voice interface has been fine-tuned to pick up many specifically Hindi or Indian words, without which the service will be of little use to those looking for movies or pictures of Bollywood actors," he said.
Since the application is also location-aware, it can throw up search relevant to the place from where it is initiated. Alok said the application has been made available in S60 platform since 75 per cent of mobile users in India -mostly young, middle class people who are eager to explore their handset- have Nokia phones.
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