Google Handwrite Brings Handwriting Recognition To Search
It is good to see that at least someone is looking beyond voice recognition and virtual assistants. Google has decided to go back to basics with the new Google Handwrite feature for Google search. Google Handwrite brings handwriting recognition to Google’s searches. Something smartphone users will find very useful.
With Google Handwrite, you can “write” your Google Search keywords, a blessing for those who use smartphones and tablets a lot, but particularly those devices which come with a stylus. Now, i wonder just how many recent smartphones have a stylus other than the Samsung Galaxy Note.
If you want to give Google Handwrite a try now, go to Google home page and enable it in the Search Settings, which will then open a pop up box where you can go ahead and scribble. It should also be mentioned at this point that the handwriting recognition processing requires more than the average processing power that some older smartphones have. So, Google Handwrite for Search feature will work well only with reasonably fast smartphones and also, your smartphone needs to operate Android version 2.3 and above, a tablet must run Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich or above and your Apple device should have iOS 5 at least.
Google also says that the new feature will work best on a Chrome browser and the native Android browser. All these restrictions are due to the “experimental” state of Handwrite.
Handwriting recognition apps are certainly not a new thing and it certainly not the first time for Google either. Google used to offer an Android app with handwriting recognition capability, which was meant for in-phone search. Handwriting recognition feature is also a part of Google translate app in mobile devices.
As Google Handwrite feature matures over time, we can be certain that Google will at some point of time bring universal handwriting recognition support to the future version Android OS.
