14 DAY TRIAL // The new flat-rate data plans from phone carriers is overwhelming, pure and simple, and it is fueling the rate at which the Internet is accessed via mobile handheld devices up to rocket speed. That has not always been the story; there was a time (which I like to refer to as "The Dark Ages") when the per-minute charging made having a phone that could access the web completely useless - nobody really used that function on a daily basis.
Right now, there's such a demand for Internet on the go that everybody is racing to optimize its services for online use on cell phones. Google is adjusting to it, and does it in style. The Mountain View based company has decided in its users' stead (and I doubt they will object) that the days when opening a browser, typing in the search engine's address and just then the query, are over. The applications Google now provides add the search box right on the phone's screen, much more accessible than back in the Dark Ages.
For most phones, like Blackberry, Nokia N-series and E-series and Windows Mobile phones, the search application is included in the Google Mobile Updater package, available at mobile.google.com. All the others (except for the iPhone, which has already seen its needs covered in January) will have to wait some more, or simply use Opera Mini.
"When we look at the combined usage numbers for BlackBerry and Symbian versions of this plug-in, we see that users are able to get Google search results up to 40 percent faster. And, BlackBerry and Symbian users with the plug-in installed search 20 percent more than those without it," Product Manager of the Google Mobile team Robert Hamilton wrote on the Google Mobile blog. "With mobile applications, we're seeing that fast is much better than slow. Although this may seem pretty intuitive, it's always nice to see new data backing this up. Moving forward, we'll continue to focus on bringing you the fastest and most compelling mobile experiences that we can," he concluded.