UK gets Yahoo's voice search for mobiles

Yahoo has launched its voice-enabled mobile search service for UK customers.

The oneSearch service has been available to some US customers since earlier this year, but Wednesday's release marks its first venture into the UK market. Voice-enabled search, in this context, consists of users speaking their search queries into the handset. The service is available as a downloadable application for certain BlackBerry devices, including the 8800 series, the Curve and the Pearl, as well as for Nokia Series 60 handsets.

"With today's launch of Yahoo oneSearch with voice, we are delivering the next generation of mobile-search technology, making it easier and quicker for users to discover, initiate and input search queries," Mitch Lazar, managing director of Connected Life at Yahoo Europe, said in a statement.

ZDNet UK's experiments with the service on a Series 60 handset suggested that oneSearch's voice-activated mode might be more tuned to the American accent than to British voices. However, Yahoo promised in its statement that "with continued usage, Yahoo oneSearch with voice will adapt to the user's intonations and accent, providing increasingly fine-tuned results as the product is used".

Yahoo oneSearch with voice has also been integrated into version 3.0 of the company's Go package of mobile-based services.