Google Gesture Search App Available for Android Phones [Android Smartphones Now Controllable with Written Gesture; Hopefully Google Has a Patent]

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Google has introduced a brand new feature/app for its Android mobile platform called Gesture Search. You can now search your Android phone with written gestures. That’s right, all you have to do is swipe your fingers on that touchscreen and your Android smartphone will deliver search results based on what you write.

Gesture Search is a new app coming straight from Google’s Google Lab but the bad news is that it’s currently available only on Android 2.0 “or above” phones in the U.S. for now. With Gesture Search you can find “a contact, an installed application, a bookmark or music track from hundreds or thousands of items by simply drawing alphabet gestures on the touchscreen.”

Pretty neat and very handy, so to speak, but definitely a lot more convenient than typing everything. You can type, erase, type again, and so on! Rinse and repeat until you find the item you were looking for.

Gesture Search is also going to learn from your search history thus delivering the desired results faster with every new search. In other words Google is doing again what Google does best, searching for stuff for you. The app is available in the Android Market so go ahead and grab it and tell us how you like it. Oh wait; you need an Android update in order to take advantage of it, don’t you?

The good news is that most Android handsets in the USA will be updated to Android 2.1 later this year. Some phones will get the update sooner than others so don’t lose hope just yet.

On a different note it will be interesting to see whether the iPhone 4G will have any kind of gesture control support. Because now that Cupertino has unleashed its legal department onto HTC we can expect similar quarrels over patents between mobile giants in the future.