Why Google’s Android is our modern day Swiss Army Knife

“An Android phone is a handheld computer, a music player, a notepad, a GPS navigation unit and more, all rolled into one sleek device that fits in your pocket”, says Google. But are we taking full advantage?

Google is a pioneer when it comes to the internet, and all things digital. However, in the smartphone sector is suffering in the reputation stakes thanks to the ‘cool’ factor Apple’s iPhone has delivered.

Yet Google’s Android mobile operating system will outpace Apple’s iPhone in number of smartphones in use worldwide by 2012, according to researcher iSuppli Corp. And Google is doing everything in its power to make sure that prediction becomes a reality.

Mobile phones today do so many things for us that sometimes we don’t even think about how we do them. Even though our phones do all these new things, the most natural way of interacting with a phone remains what it always has been: speaking.

With this in mind, Google has introduced Voice Actions for Android.

Voice Actions are a series of spoken commands that let users control their phone using voice. Android users will now be able to call contacts, send texts and email, listen to music, browse the web, and complete common tasks, all just by speaking into the phone.

And of course, users can still conduct a Google search using their voice too.

As always with Google, the product is the marketing itself. In this case, Google incorporated a new YouTube channel launched today called GoogleMobile, where Android users can see senior software engineer Mike LeBeau explaining how to use all the new features:

Androids are already outselling the iPhone in the US after the phones were adopted by Verizon Wireless, AT&T and Sprint Nextel, the three largest mobile-phone carriers, according to Nielsen.