Google has released a major update to its Chrome browser for iOS, bringing the version up to 27, and adding conversational voice search (which was announced and introduced to the desktop version of Chrome earlier this month), as well as faster page loading and a few minor bug fixes and security improvement.
Google today updated Chrome for iOS to version 27, which introduces a couple of new features that should make using voice search on iOS a bit easier. Just like on the desktop and Android, as well as the Google Search app for iOS, Chrome for iOS now allows you to speak your search query and — assuming Google’s natural language algorithms understand it and its Knowledge Graph knows the answer — it will also speak your results back to you.
Here is what this looks like in the Google Search app for iOS. You can use the same queries and get the same results in Chrome for iOS:
With this update, Chrome for iOS now also gets the new Google voice search interface with the pulsating microphone that you’ve probably seen on other platforms already. This means the voice recognition is now also significantly faster than before, and the application — just like all the other voice-enabled Google services — will now stream the text back to you as it understands it in real time.
Google also says that Chrome for iOS can now reload pages faster, “even when the network is slow or unavailable.” I can only assume that this means the app now tries to keep more assets in its cache, but Google hasn’t detailed how exactly it manages to speed up reload times in this version.
What’s New in Version 27.0.1453.10
- Improved voice search!
- -Say what you want and get results back without typing
- Faster voice recognition with text streamed on the fly
- -Get answers spoken back to you with web results tailored to your questions
- Faster page reloading
- -Pages reload faster even when the network is slow or unavailable
- Stability / security improvements and bug fixes
The update is available now as a universal app, and, as always, is a free download from the App Store.
