If you’ve been pining for Google Gesture Search but are stuck with an older flavor of Android, there’s some good news. Google has made its wacky searching app available for Android 1.6 devices and higher.
The app lets you easily draw letters on your screen that will be searched for in your applications, bookmarks, contacts or music. Drawing an “M” could bring up your mom’s phone number or a track from the Mountain Goats, for example. I played with it when it first launched and it works well but is not really any quicker or easier than using voice or text search. It is a really cool tech demo and it shows how many ways Google is looking at search.
There has been some griping that Android is, essentially, innovating too quickly and leaving older devices in the dust. For example, Gesture Search wasn’t available on the just-released Motorola Backflip for AT&T because it required Android 2.0. While fragmentation is an issue, Google is doing an good job of supporting the multiple versions – it ported Google Maps Navigation, the crown jewel of Android 2.0, to previous version.
[Use QR code for Google Gesture Search (Free)]
[Via Google Mobile Blog]