Microsoft’s free Bing App for iPhone can search the Web, news, photos and maps. But in one central feature, it continuously crashes: When you use its Voice control.
Several users have reported Bing’s voice function to crash on an iPhone 3GS and new 32/64Gb iPod touch models. Furthermore, the application cannot be installed on an iPod touch (1G) without microphone, while the voice search is only one of the features and not necessary.
Bing on iPhone looks very similar to the search engine’s website—inclusive the changing background photo. The image search displays results on a 4*5 images grid. Bing can also read the user’s location on iPhones and iPods touch, either by GPS or known wi-fi spots.
Update: The Bing for Mobile team is working on an update for the Bing App for iPhone. Justin Jed, Group Product Manager for Bing Mobile Search, announced:
We’ve identified that the issue relates to the region the phone is set to. We’re working on a fix for this right now, and we’ll update the app in the next few days. People will get the update automatically – you won’t have to update or reinstall the app. If you are encountering this issue you can temporarily work around it by going to Settings > General > International and change your Region Format to “United States.”
The Bing team also works on support for iPod 1G. However, there won’t be any support for international markets in the near future.