Bing for mobile (formerly ''Live Search Mobile'') is a search tool for handheld

mobile device A mobile device or handheld device is a computer small enough to hold and operate in hand. Mobile devices are typically battery-powered and possess a flat-panel display and one or more built-in input devices, such as a touchscreen or keypad. ...

s from

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

as part of their

Bing Bing most often refers to: * Bing Crosby (1903–1977), American singer * Microsoft Bing, a web search engine Bing may also refer to: Food and drink * Bing (bread), a Chinese flatbread * Bing (soft drink), a UK brand * Bing cherry, a varie ...

search engine. It is designed for mobile device displays. Bing Mobile is built into

Windows Mobile Windows Mobile is a discontinued mobile operating system developed by Microsoft for smartphones and personal digital assistants (PDA). Designed to be the portable equivalent of the Windows desktop OS in the emerging Mobile device, mobile/port ...

and

Windows Phone Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued mobile operating system developed by Microsoft Mobile for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design languag ...

as proprietary software, accessed via the Search key on

Windows Phone 7 Windows Phone 7 (WP7) is the first release of the Windows Phone mobile client operating system, released worldwide on October 21, 2010, and in the United States on November 8, 2010. It runs on the Windows CE 6.0 kernel. It serves as the successo ...

and

Windows Phone 8 Windows Phone 8 is the second generation of the Windows Phone mobile operating system from Microsoft Corporation, Microsoft, released on October 29, 2012. It runs on the Windows NT kernel and is the successor to Windows Phone 7. It was the first ...

devices. It is also available on Windows Phone 8.1 (and integrated with

Microsoft Cortana Cortana was a virtual assistant developed by Microsoft that used the Microsoft Bing, Bing search engine to perform tasks such as setting reminders and question answering, answering questions for users. Cortana was available in English language, ...

where available), and can be downloaded for other platforms, including

Android Android most commonly refers to: *Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), a mobile operating system primarily developed by Google * Android TV, a operating system developed ...

Windows Phone

With the launch of Windows Phone, the new operating system included the Bing Hub, a centralised hub for contextual web searches and

Bing Maps Bing Maps (previously Live Search Maps, Windows Live Maps, Windows Live Local, and MSN Virtual Earth) is a web mapping service provided as a part of Microsoft's Bing suite of search engines and powered by the Bing Maps Platform framework which al ...

for navigation built-in which gained some additional features such as showing users real-time traffic updates, street-view photos, 3D graphics, and directions. To make Windows Phone hardware more uniform Microsoft requires all Windows Phones feature a dedicated "Search button" that opens up Bing Mobile. With Windows Phone 7.5, the first major update to Windows Phone Microsoft included several new features to the Bing Hub including the new Bing Vision application that allows users to scan QR Codes, books, price tags, and various other items but unlike Google Goggles, can not scan any object due to its limited functionality, other than scanning objects Bing Vision comes with a built-in version of the Bing Translator that can scan texts and translate it into the phone's language,

Engadget Engadget ( ) is a technology news, reviews and analysis website offering daily coverage of gadgets, consumer electronics, video games, gaming hardware, apps, social media, streaming, AI, space, robotics, electric vehicles and other potentially ...

did a test they scanned the back cover a book and it only picked up about 90 percent of the words in the summary after the text was found, Bing Vision's translation feature supports 26 languages. Bing Maps also received new features namely the Bing Local Scout which takes a look at businesses around the user's location and gives them a list of local restaurants, bars, and shopping centres. The Bing Hub can also open up Bing Local Scout and got a new feature added in Windows Phone 7.5 called Bing Audio, a service similar to Shazam which can recognise songs and show the album in the

Zune Marketplace Zune is a discontinued software program that was developed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows, Windows that functions as a full media player, library, media streaming server, mobile device management, and interface for the discontinued Zune Marke ...

. A notable difference between the Bing Hub and the website is the lack of

Bing Travel MSN Travel (previously Bing Travel, Live Search Farecast, and Farecast.com) is a discontinued airfare prediction website in the computer reservations system industry. It premiered to the public as Farecast on May 15, 2007. Until 2014, it offered p ...

. With the launch of

, Microsoft did not include any major updates to the Bing Hub, but Microsoft later included a new Bing suite of applications. Bing News a customisable news aggregator which features headlines and videos of breaking news and allows users to track specific story categories, topics, or news sources. Bing Sports which shows sports headlines and games featuring 8 categories: recent scores, top sports headlines, videos, photos, schedules, standings, and statistics. Bing Weather which in up-to-date conditions, temperature, precipitation, and wind. And Bing Finance which showcases financial news, market information, currency conversion rates, stock option updates, and customisable interactive charts for American markets. Subsequently, Microsoft launched Bing Travel, Bing Food & Drink, and Bing Health & Fitness applications which alongside the original suite of mobile apps were all rebranded under the

MSN MSN is a web portal and related collection of Internet services and apps provided by Microsoft. The main webpage provides news, weather, sports, finance and other content curated from hundreds of different sources that Microsoft has partnere ...

brand in 2014. In Windows Phone 8.1 Microsoft introduced Cortana to select markets, Cortana is an

intelligent personal assistant A virtual assistant (VA) is a software agent that can perform a range of tasks or services for a user based on user input such as commands or questions, including verbal ones. Such technologies often incorporate chatbot capabilities to strea ...

built on top of the Bing Hub's Microsoft TellMe voice features. Cortana responds to a set of commands such as setting alarms, reminders, making suggestions based on the user's daily habits and frequented places, notify about the weather, turn up the latest headlines and news on the user's personal interests, a "do not disturb me" feature named ''Quiet hours'' which can set exceptions for contacts in the user's inner circle, predict sports events and tell jokes. For users who enabled Cortana Bing Audio/Bing Music remains included built into Cortana's Hub but Bing Vision becomes only accessible via the Microsoft Camera by selecting lenses. A common criticism against Cortana is that it does not understand or respond to queries as well as other digital assistants does and will open up a Bing search result when it does not understand the question. Exclusive to Microsoft Lumia devices with the Lumia Denim update is the "Hey Cortana" feature which allows users to open Cortana with voice activation while their Windows Phone is in standby mode.

Features

Bing for mobile browser - m.bing.com

Mobile browsing allows users to access Bing on their mobile devices through WAP or

GPRS General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), also called 2.5G, is a mobile data standard on the 2G cellular communication network's Global System for Mobile Communications, global system for mobile communications (GSM). Networks and mobile devices wit ...

connection. The interface is optimized for viewing on mobile handsets. Users can: *Search the web for information *Get news information *Find local businesses in the user's local area *Get maps and driving directions *Get answers to questions *In the UK and Japan - "Find My Location" to pinpoint a user's location *Share content via the

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

In the U.S. on

HTML Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets ( ...

-ready mobile devices such as iPhone, Android, and touch-screen Windows phones, further features are available such as automatic location detection (geolocation), suggested local listings based on location and time of day, the ability to save listings to Favorites, and send that list to friends, cinematic listings with clips and trailers, and sports scores and stats, with real-time updates during games.

Bing for mobile application

The Mobile Application is available as a

Java ME Java Platform, Micro Edition or Java ME is a computing platform for development and deployment of porting, portable code for embedded system, embedded and mobile devices (micro-controllers, sensors, gateways, mobile phones, personal digita ...

application for non-Windows phones, as a richer .NET Framework application for

s, and as an application for

BlackBerry OS BlackBerry OS is a discontinued proprietary mobile operating system developed by Canadian company Research In Motion (now BlackBerry Limited) for its BlackBerry line of smartphone handheld devices. The operating system provides multitasking ...

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

, and

Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless (BREW, also known as Brew MP or Qualcomm BREW) is an obsolete application development platform created by Qualcomm, originally for code division multiple access (CDMA) mobile phones, featuring third-party a ...

(BREW). It provides local listings, maps (road and aerial satellite), driving directions, and traffic conditions. Other features include: * Predictive text input * Browse and search through business categories * Image search and image exploration * Speech recognition search input * Search results include a phone number and address; users may click to call for an immediate connection * Send search results to others using SMS * Find maps for specific addresses * Get directions to and from a destination * Get turn by turn directions using a GPS receiver * View traffic information for major roads in selected cities * Get weather forecasts * View movie showtimes and theaters * Turn-by-turn navigation for Windows 6.x phones. * A hub in Windows Phone 7.x and later devices. * For Android it includes a built-in browser * Bing Rewards * The ability to set the device's lock screen based on Bing's daily images. The Bing app is available in the U.S. on a variety of Windows phones, Android platform devices, all BlackBerry devices, several BREW devices, iPhone and iPod Touch, and Sidekick devices. In April 2015 Microsoft redesigned the

Google Android Android is an operating system based on a modified version of the Linux kernel and other open-source software, designed primarily for touchscreen-based mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Android has historically been developed b ...

and

versions of Bing Mobile and implemented several new "cards" such as the "image of the day card" which shows Bing's rotating images and additional information, the "popular now card" which contains information on the most popular searched items of that day, a " Bing Rewards card" which shows the user's Bing Rewards points and serves as a central hub for Bing's search settings, a "Settings card" where users can alter their Safe Search filter and change what content they can see and which content they do not want to see, and a "Footer card" which gives users the ability to send feedback to Microsoft.

iOS

The Bing app for iOS (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad) includes these further features: * Barcode and cover art scanning * Enhanced product listings * Social updates from Facebook and Twitter * Social search - see results from social network alongside web results * Share search results on Facebook, Twitter, or through email * Weather - get information about local and international weather * Trending - see what news is trending in the world *Image Match - upload an image and get results for similar looking images *Sharing options through various messaging applications like

WeChat WeChat or Weixin in Chinese ( zh, c=微信, p=Wēixìn , l=micro-message) is an instant messaging, social media, and mobile payment mobile app, app developed by Tencent. First released in 2011, it became the world's largest standalone mobile a ...

and

WhatsApp WhatsApp (officially WhatsApp Messenger) is an American social media, instant messaging (IM), and voice-over-IP (VoIP) service owned by technology conglomerate Meta. It allows users to send text, voice messages and video messages, make vo ...

Bing 411

In the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

, Microsoft operated a toll-free number (1-800-BING-411 or 1-800-CALL-411) for directory assistance called Bing 411. This service was identical, except for the opening message, with the voice search service powered by

Tellme Tellme Networks, Inc. was an American company founded in 1999 by Mike McCue and Angus Davis, which specialized in telephone-based applications. Its headquarters were in Mountain View, California. Tellme Networks was acquired by Microsoft on Ma ...

on 1-800-555-TELL. Users were able to find local shops and restaurants and obtain driving directions, traffic reports, sports scores, stock quotes, news, and weather reports through this service. Service on 1-800-BING-411 and 1-800-555-TELL was discontinued on June 1, 2012. The 1-800-CALL-411 number was discontinued a few months later. 1-800-CALL-411 has resurfaced in recent times. The number first tells you to press 9 for directory assistance. This transfers you to AT&T Wireless's "Voice Info" service, an ad supported voice search service still apparently powered by Tellme, that is normally accessed by AT&T Wireless customers by dialing *8 (formerly #121).

References

External links

* {{Windows Mobile Mobile Pocket PC software Windows Mobile software Windows Phone software Android (operating system) software IOS software Cross-platform software Internet properties established in 2010 es:Bing Mobile