News · 9 Jun 2010 · MTW Editorial Team
One of the best features of Android is undoubtedly its voice search functionality. Unfortunately as I have reported in my HTC Desire review the feature only worked in English (US and UK) so everybody else was sadly left out of the party. But you can know wipe your tears thanks to today’s announcement that French, German, Italian and Spanish are finally supported on Android, iPhone and Blackberry devices:
Voice has always been the most natural way to interact with a phone — speaking is typically faster and easier than typing. We first developed Search by voice for English, and then for Mandarin Chinese and Japanese. Today we’re excited to welcome speakers of French, German, Italian, and Spanish.
microphone icon to start a voice-powered search. iPhone and BlackBerry users who already have Google Mobile App installed can enable voice search by selecting the new languages from the settings panel within the app.
If you have Android 1.6 or 2.1 (Donut or Eclair), and you have already installed the Search by voice application, starting later today voice search will return recognition results for French, German, Italian or Spanish if your phone has one of those languages chosen in ‘Language and keyboard’ settings. If you do not have the Search by voice application, you can install it from Android Market on your phone – search for ‘voice search‘. This application is only available in the Android Markets for France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
Source: Google
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