Bing is the new search engine from Microsoft that offers some unique features that are actually intriguing. Now, they’ve brought their new toy to the iPhone in hopes of challenging the Google app.
As people are experiencing Bing on their devices, they are generally feeling a similar opinion that I definitely agree with. Most people are surprised that Microsoft has actually come out with a great product. They are also noticing that Bing may have a slight edge over Google’s app just because of the beautiful user interface. Apple fans may cringe at the thought of using a Microsoft product on their iPhones, but it may be a bit difficult to stay away from this one.
The first thing you’ll notice about the app is the beautiful daily image that sets its background. These images are always high quality, and are mostly things you’d never search for or see on your own. You can even learn a bit about the image by tapping on one of the icons with a fact attached to it. The bottom of the screen is home to your six main options. You can search for images, movies, maps, businesses, news and directions. Or, you can simply start typing at the top of the screen to search the web. Bing will automatically suggest words as you type in the search bar. This cuts down on time, allowing you to select a topic from a list of suggested words. As I was searching, I found that most of the time those search suggestions were exactly what I was looking for.
When searching for images, they will appear in a grid format for browsing. You may then open a single picture at a time to see it full screen or go to the site where it came from. The movies button will bring up a list of movies showing in your area. Theaters are listed with show times for each movie. The news button will display the most recent news stories, separated into categories. When searching for businesses, the closest businesses will be displayed at the top, and two options will appear for each one. You can call the business or get directions. I found this feature more intuitive than the Google app, making it much easier to find a phone number and call it.
Even though the iPhone comes with a maps application, and GPS apps are all over the place nowadays, people still want maps in their search engines. Google has been the standard for all mapping tasks. However, Bing brings with it a very functional map service as well. There have been a few complaints that Bing’s map data is not up to date. I did not encounter this issue myself, but regardless, this feature is very well designed and executed in this application. Using the business search feature, you can get quick directions from your current location to any store you’ve searched for. A highlighted route will be drawn and a list of directions displayed for each turn. You can view your map in regular, satellite mode or a combination of the two. When panning around or zooming, you’ll never see a grey checkerboard like you do in other map applications. This map simply blurs out and fades until the data has been received. The whole experience is smooth and fluid.
With all these great features Bing has to offer, you would think there has to be at least one major flaw with it. Many people have complained about the voice recognition not being very accurate. However, after testing several words and phrases, I came up with a 67% accuracy rate. It’s not perfect, but it’s really not bad. When using the voice search while driving, one could easily come up with the correct search results to get the phone number to a store they would like to travel to.
It’s almost impossible to write this review without comparing Bing to Google. Each app has great, functional features that are very useful to find the information that you need. However, with all of its great features, combined with its beautiful and intuitive user interface, Bing has earned a permanent spot on my iPhone. It is smooth, fast and user-friendly. Oh, and I did mention it’s beautiful? It’s free, so there’s absolutely no risk in trying it out. Go get it.
