Google Instant Now Available on Android, iOS Devices

November 4th, 2010 by Avram Piltch, LAPTOP Online Editorial Director  

Google Instant, the Google feature that shows search results as you type, has come to mobile. Today, the company announced that uses of iOS and Android 2.2-powered devices are able to get Google instant simply by pointing their mobile web browsers to Google.com and clicking on the link which says “Instant (beta) is off: Turn On.”

With the feature enabled, users can type into the search box on the Google home page and watch as the search box moves to the top of the screen and a set of results appears below and updates as they keep typing in the query. As with Google instant on the desktop, you do not need to hit the Search button for results to appear.

We tested the new Google Instant for mobile on a Motorola Droid running Android 2.2 and found that it works as advertised, but isn’t all that convenient, because it only works from within the Google web site. If, like us, you most often enter your search queries directly into the browser’s address bar or into the search box that appears when you hit the magnifying glass button, you won’t see this new feature.

Even those who visit Google.com to search may be disappointed to know that you can only see the first search result above the fold. As you can see in the screen shot above, there’s so much space taken up by auto suggestions that there’s only enough room for the top entry to appear on the screen, though you can scroll down to see more  results. This holds true whether you’re in landscape mode with a physical keyboard out or in portrait mode using the virtual keyboard. In landscape mode with virtual keyboard, there’s no room at all for Google instant results.

We can confirm, however, that Google Instant for mobile works in third party browsers, because we were able to use it when visiting google.com from Dolphin Browser HD. Unfortunately, you must make sure that Dolphin and other browsers are set to mobile, not desktop mode, to see the Instant option on the Google home page. We also tried visiting Google.com on an HTC Hero with the older Android 2.1 operating system and, just as Google stated, the instant option is not available.

If you want to see a video demo of Google Instant in action, check out the video below (courtesy of Google):

Comments (2 Responses) 

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2 Responses to “Google Instant Now Available on Android, iOS Devices”

  1. aftermath Says:
    November 4th, 2010 at 7:35 pm

    This is good news for people stuck on low-end consumer devices that run iOS and Android. Better mobile platforms have had this feature in place since its first roll out. I guess part of the problem with having Apple of Google curate your mobile computing experience is that “you’ll get it when you get it if you get it”. It’s good to know that people locked into these platform were permitted what the rest of us have been allowed/able to use all along.

  2. Name Says:
    November 5th, 2010 at 12:00 am

    Unless I’m actually using Google’s subscription products at that moment I prefer to do my googling semi-anonymously (they do see my IP address but still…) and I immensely dislike the “instant” shows-search-results-as-you-type “feature”. I very rarely search for simply “book” or “beatles” and usually have several keywords in mind to narrow down the results… and “instant’s” continuous churning below the entry field is at best annoying.

    This “feature” appears to be default behaviour on non-logged-in sessions!

    On mobile devices with 3G etc. data connection the user also often ends up paying for the downloaded google-predicted “instant” results. The predictive text input suggestions can be useful, but that feature only needs access to local dictionary and search history.

    I really wish Google would only enable any annoying “auto-features” for their captive logged-in users and even then only on opt-in basis.

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