Microsoft has made massive changes to its Bing for iPhone app, with an emphasis on bringing up more relevant and useful information during searches that is integrated with your apps. The improved Bing, using Microsoft’s Knowledge and Action Graph, will pull up the required information but provide deep links into your other iPhone apps so that you can better complete the task at hand.

For instance, Google may bring up similar information to Bing, but the new iPhone app is also integrated with the iOS ecosystem. This means that when you are searching for something like a list of French restaurants in your vicinity you’ll not only get the expected restaurant results based on where you are standing, but you’ll also get added information on how to get taxis, related reviews, etc, as well as providing a list of apps you might need to book the restaurant or travel to it.

Essentially this means that you won’t have to do a series of searches to get what you want; all the necessary information will come to you in that one search. You could be walking down the street in Tokyo and search for nearby gyms, and you’ll get a list of gyms. But you’ll also get information on how to get there, and if you tap that option your phone will open the Uber app. At the same time more apps will appear, such as Yelp, so you might read reviews, or a workout app for when you arrive.  Similarly, if you want to watch a film and search for it, with Bing’s integrated apps doing so is just one tap away.

Customer reviews are positive so far with one reviewer saying, “WOW. This is actually a really well-designed, useful mobile app. Infinitely better than the Google ‘app’, which is basically just a web wrapper around the Google mobile site.” At the same time Tom Warren of The Verge admits that it’s unlikely that people will download the Bing app and forget Google, but he also adds, “…after using the app for the past few days I can certainly see its appeal.”

While it might be an uphill struggle to get people onto Bing, early users have been verily impressed, with engadget summarizing their experience, “Between voice integration, the quick access to local info without having to type and the integration with your app collection, Bing for iPhone is definitely worth a look if you want a deeper search experience.”

Photo credit: Microsoft Bing Blog