Today, we’re excited to announce the next step in the evolution of Bing for Mobile, with the release of the new Bing for Mobile app for iPhone and Android (coming soon to more devices). Today’s update uses HTML5 to blend the mobile browse experience with the app experience so you get a consistent and fast mobile search experience whether you’re using m.bing.com from your browser or the Bing app.
Rather than tightly binding functions into a mobile client, we want to embrace the drive towards exposing our functions via an HTML5 experience. In order for search to advance, engines need to be able to call functions that are currently ‘hiding’ in apps so we can better help people get done what they are trying to get done. Using HTML5, our goal is to build a mobile experience that leverages the unique capabilities of the different platforms including camera support and voice search, while making the functions the apps can provide consistent across the platforms and – in the future – callable by engines to help people get from searching to doing.
Check out this video where Andy and Stefan talk about this transition to an HTML5 mobile experience:
The update includes several cool new features such as:
The new app is currently available for iPhone devices and select Android devices in the United States. We’re working to release the same consistent experience for RIM and Windows Phone 7 devices in the future, and will share more details as they become available.
To get the update, go to the Android Market (Android users on Verizon can go here) or iPhone App store to download the latest version. Once you have downloaded, future updates to the experience will happen automatically.
Check out the update today and let us know what you think!
- Santanu Basu, Product Manager, Bing for Mobile
We want this in the UK, please!
Could you guys please add hotmail inside the Bing app or make a native iPad app that does Hotmail like the Bing app? I am really tired of the hotmail UI, it looks and feels ancient.
I use windows 7 on my smartphone. Is it already known when the release for windows will be?
Bing's home page is a great work and I use Bing most of the time and it mostly works. Thank you dear Bing people.
I'd like to comment on Image search.
I like the endless scroll of image search, however would you please consider keeping the image settings stay put if I someone enters a new keyboard? Usually you can't find the right keyword, especially for images, so you need to jump from one keyword to another and for each search Bing resets the image settings back to defaults.
let's say I am searching a Coffee related image in black and white and wallpaper size. Enter Coffe, select filters and go. OK, I couldn't find something, let's try caffeine. Type the keyword, hit enter, then you see that color filter is gone, size filter is gone, now I have to select my filters again.
Thank you
To me seems unreal that my phone, paid Euro 500 and powered by MS OS, will be among the last ones to receive, sometimes in the future, this update.
I can understand the desire to push updates for platforms with greater market share but putting your own OS behind is outrageous......
So, MICROSOFT's Bing creates stuff for APPLE and GOOGLE's platforms first, rather than MICROSOFT's own Windows Phone 7. Thanks guys, you make me feel really valued as a Windows Phone 7 user.
The Apps' great. The presentation not so.
1) Is there something with the sound going on (Im on an imac so i dont know if it's an oddity with Silverlight on a mac).
2) Quite honestly, the camera stuff is unprofessional. Both Apple and Google now truly make an effort when presenting new services and products to users (aside from Google's dodgy launch of Gmail app yesterday). Come on - you're huge company broken up into deliciously talented groups - don't let it down. Show talent in the way you present, or look like a couple of kids doing a school project.
@eddy_grubb
Because it's not like a Bing app's built in to Windows Phone, amirite? :p
even tho Bing is an integrated part of WP7 so its understandable that an update to the Bing App would be easier to release than an update to the OS (there is no such thing as a Bing App for WP7), it still feels like a slap in the face to us WP7 users who have actually invested our time and money with MS.
