Google announces supercharged voice search for Android

Google announces upgraded voice search
Google announces upgraded voice search

Google has announced that it has overhauled the voice searching in its Android phones to make finding stuff with your mouth even easier.

The new feature means if you want to send text messages, listen to music, get directions or call a specific business, you simply need to say the words and the eerily accurate voice recognition will get on the case for you.

Of course, there's some input needed, such as having to press send after you've told the phone to 'Send a text message to Rich Fields: Your Mum says hi and she'll be home when she's finished'.

Which is obviously a good thing, else you could send something inappropriate.

Bad news UK - for now

While this is a step above simply being able to search using voice (you can also dictate text messages and specify their destination without fingers, for instance) it's not all good news for UK folk.

Firstly, you have to have Android 2.2 to download the Voice Actions application - which very few people in the country have at the moment.

And even if you're one of the lucky HTC Desire owners that's upgraded, you'll still be disappointed as the Voice Search prohibition is still in force, so for some reason there's no chance of using this cool new feature on your favourite phone.

We haven't been able to download the updated application as yet, but if it's better than the standard voice search, then we're pretty sure it's going to be a belter.

See the application in action and decide whether the guy's patronising tone is enough to make you want to voice search at all:

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Gareth Beavis
Formerly Global Editor in Chief

Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grew with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.