Commentary

Google Spins Out Native Search Client For S60 Phones

It's sort of like a widget, but sort of not. This new mobile search client from Google sits on the home screen of your S60 mobile phone. You type search queries into it directly, hit search, and Google opens your Internet connection, performs the search, and displays the results. It's the fastest way to search the Internet from your phone.

It's sort of like a widget, but sort of not. This new mobile search client from Google sits on the home screen of your S60 mobile phone. You type search queries into it directly, hit search, and Google opens your Internet connection, performs the search, and displays the results. It's the fastest way to search the Internet from your phone.The new mobile software is available for download for select S60 devices. Basically, they need to have a "Control" key or the little "Pencil/Edit" key. The N95, for example, has the pencil key, and is what I used to test out the software.

Going to the Google mobile site, it took a little bit of digging to find the app, but eventually I found it. It downloaded over EDGE in mere seconds and installed quickly. After agreeing to all the end-user licensing stuff, a little text box sits at the bottom of the home screen on your S60 phone. It goes away after a second or so. Hitting the pencil key brings it back with a cursor blinking in it. (I made sure to end my packet connection to AT&T's MEdiaNet service first). I typed out a search for "Mesa Boogie".


More Mobility Insights

White Papers

More >>

Reports

More >>

Webcasts

More >>

Once the search was typed, I simply hit the center of the d-pad on my phone, and let the search client do its thing. It opened up my browser, connected to the Internet, performed the search, and displayed my results in about 7 seconds pretty consistently.

Before, you were forced to open your browser first, get to the Google page, and then perform your search. Loading all those pages takes time (even if Google is your mobile home page). I performed the same search by going to the Google mobile site and it took about 40 seconds, by way of comparison. This native client is by far the fastest mobile search client I've used.

Now if only Google will create such a client to search the contents of the phone itself...


Related Reading




Currently we allow the following HTML tags in comments:

Single tags

These tags can be used alone and don't need an ending tag.

<br> Defines a single line break

<hr> Defines a horizontal line

Matching tags

These require an ending tag - e.g. <i>italic text</i>

<a> Defines an anchor

<b> Defines bold text

<big> Defines big text

<blockquote> Defines a long quotation

<caption> Defines a table caption

<cite> Defines a citation

<code> Defines computer code text

<em> Defines emphasized text

<fieldset> Defines a border around elements in a form

<h1> This is heading 1

<h2> This is heading 2

<h3> This is heading 3

<h4> This is heading 4

<h5> This is heading 5

<h6> This is heading 6

<i> Defines italic text

<p> Defines a paragraph

<pre> Defines preformatted text

<q> Defines a short quotation

<samp> Defines sample computer code text

<small> Defines small text

<span> Defines a section in a document

<s> Defines strikethrough text

<strike> Defines strikethrough text

<strong> Defines strong text

<sub> Defines subscripted text

<sup> Defines superscripted text

<u> Defines underlined text

InformationWeek encourages readers to engage in spirited, healthy debate, including taking us to task. However, InformationWeek moderates all comments posted to our site, and reserves the right to modify or remove any content that it determines to be derogatory, offensive, inflammatory, vulgar, irrelevant/off-topic, racist or obvious marketing/SPAM. InformationWeek further reserves the right to disable the profile of any commenter participating in said activities.

Disqus Tips To upload an avatar photo, first complete your Disqus profile. | View the list of supported HTML tags you can use to style comments. | Please read our commenting policy.
T-Shirt Giveaway T-Shirt Giveaway: Each week we're selecting one great comment from our readers. The author of the comment will receive an InformaitonWeek Community t-shirt. So get posting!
Subscribe to RSS

Resource Links