Today Google finally got around to bestowing the powers of speech unto the Symbian S60 smartphone platform. The newest version of the Google Mobile App for S60 now supports voice-based searching.This feature has been a long time coming for the S60 platform. After all, Google has offered voice-based search for the iPhone and Android platforms for quote some time. It seems odd that Google waited so long to support the most-used smartphone operating system around the world.

Starting now, it does.

The new Google Mobile App for S60 -- which can be downloaded at m.google.com -- will let users of S60 phones speak their search queries rather than type them. They simply need to hold down the green send key and say what it is they are looking for. Google will send the speech file to its servers, translate it into text, conduct a search based on that text, and then return results to the handset.

Google said that it has been working on this feature for a while. In addition to the voice-based searching, there is a new link to the application for the home page that makes it even faster to launch.

Last up, Google says that the voice-search application now also understands Mandarin Chinese. Before, voice search only supported in English. This means that users of S60-based Nokia phones in the world's most populous country can conduct voice searches in Mandarin, rather than English.

Good stuff, Google.