Nuance brings Dragon Dictation and Search to the iPhone

The Dragon apps will be available from the Apple App Store soon

Nuance has announced its Dragon Dictation and Dragon Search apps for the iPhone 4, which convert speech into text and enable voice activated searches.

Dragon Dictation allows users to dictate emails, text messages and updates for social networking sites five times faster than typing, according to the firm.

The app automatically saves messages as a draft when switching between applications, or when carrying out another function such as answering a call.

Dragon Search, meanwhile, carries out dictated searches across Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, iTunes, YouTube and Twitter, and lets users switch between these sites to view results via a carousel at the top of the screen.

"Speech recognition has come a long way, and smartphones have opened up a whole new world of opportunity in the consumer and enterprise spaces," said Steve Chambers, chief marketing officer at Nuance.

"[For example], speech recognition will help doctors provide better care by allowing them to record patient data quickly and accurately."

Both apps will be available on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. They are compatible with iOS 4, but can also run on earlier versions of Apple's mobile operating system, Philippe Jeanrenaud, director of speech mobility marketing for EMEA at Nuance, told V3.co.uk.

The apps are still awaiting approval from Apple, but could be in the App Store before the end of July. Nuance said that both will be available for free for an unspecified time; any follow-up pricing has not yet been confirmed.

V3.co.uk has published a video demo of the Dragon Dictation and Search apps running on an iPhone.