Microsoft"s Bing search apps for smartphones moved into a new era this week with the launch of new versions for Apple"s iOS smartphones as well as certain Android-powered smartphones. The official Bing blog site reveals some of the details of the new Bing app which will also be coming to Blackberry and, of course, Windows Phone devices sometime in the future.
The new HTML5 features are described in the video which you can see above this post. So why move to HTML5 in the first place. Microsoft says, "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."
Some of those features include adding real time transit info and news for the Android version of the Bing app that was previously only available to check out via the https://m.bing.com web site. The new video domain on the m.bing.com web site can also now be accessed via the iOS version of the Bing app. You can also link business information with a map in just one view in the new app version along with being able to seek out local shopping deals from over 100 deal companies here in the US.
While perhaps not quite as advanced as the voice-controlled Siri features in the iPhone 4S, the new Bing mobile app does add new features to mobile search features that will give smartphone users some added functionality.