People often forget that there's more than one way to find webpages, directions, videos, and photos on the Internet. There are actually plenty of good reasons to try out alternatives to market leader Google, and the Bing app for the iPhone shows several of them. Bing, which actually predates Google's iPhone search app, has a design that's gorgeous, clear, and simple to use. Feature-wise, Bing's app can keep up, and adds voice and camera input along with local info. What's more, the Bing app's home screen offers local guidance and news suggestions, rather than just a blank search box.

Starting Up

I tested Bing for iPhone on my iPhone 6s. After you download the 32MB Bing app from the iPhone App Store, you can start using it immediately—no account sign-in is required. By contrast, the Google iPhone app starts by asking you to sign in so that it can track all your activity, and Microsoft's Cortana app requires an account sign-in for its personalized daily glance page and reminder notifications.

With Bing, though, there's a reason you might want to sign in: You can earn reward points—in exchange for letting Microsoft track you. Just as some credit cards share some of the profits with you through reward programs, Bing Rewards can earn you points towards gift cards, charitable donations, and sweepstake entries. Aside from that, signing in lets you revisit your search history on other instances of Bing. 

Interface
I already liked earlier versions of the Bing app's interface, and in the latest release it has been drastically redesigned and simplified. There's a big magnifying glass icon in the center that makes its function more obvious, with a row of icons for specific search types below it. The choices make sense for mobile users: Near Me, Restaurants, Movies, Images, Videos, and Maps. I was surprised that the last option uses (the much improved) Apple Maps rather than Bing Maps. Below are trending news story headlines and images. 

The interface lets you swipe to move back and forth through buttons and webpages and to get back to the start screen. The menu button offers Search History, Bookmarks, Settings, Rewards, Feedback, and FAQ. A Private mode lets you use the Bing app without having your search, site-viewing history, and cookies saved. You can do the same thing in Google Search, but you need to drill down deeper into menus. Bing also offers a "Make it all disappear" choice that clears all search history and webpage cookies. In fact, for every type of search you do in Bing, there's a Private mode slider you can enable. Bing can also translate pages to your choice of 44 languages—not an option in the Google Search app.

Another nifty interface feature is that you can have multiple instances, or tabs, of Bing searches, by tapping the overlapping rectangles icon at the top of the menu. Just tap it again to switch tabs. This highlights the app's role as a browser, and you can even add private tabs the way you can in most desktop browsers.

Finding What You Need

Tapping the Near Me button not only opens a new row of buttons offering nearby restaurants, coffee, gas, groceries, banks, and so on, but it also shows a row of deals from Groupon and other discount services. Tap Restaurants, and you see lists for Nearby, Highly Rated (with help from Yelp and TripAdvisor), Fast Food, Delivery, and Online Reservations. The Google app can, of course, find nearby restaurants, but you don't get the other sorting options, and its ratings are from less-widely used sources. Other selector buttons in the Bing app include Open Now and Has Deal—helpful stuff.

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Tapping Movies similarly shows you ratings from Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB services. You can get similar info from the Google app after specifically entering "movies" into its search box. Both apps can play the movie's trailer and open Fandango, from which you can buy a ticket from your phone.

When you get to a restaurant result page, you don't just see links and a map as you do on the Google app; instead you get a well laid-out page with a map at the top, large buttons for directions and calling, but especially noteworthy are app buttons: Yelp and Grub Hub for ordering food; Yelp, FourSquare, and Zomato for reading reviews; and Uber and Lyft for transportation. There's also a Get a Ride button that details the various Uber price levels with links to book a car at each price. This app integration is a major differentiator from the Google app's results, which pretty much stick to the search behemoth's own services.

Every result page also includes a Share button, which lets you not only share via all the standard email services, apps, and social networks, but also save it to bookmarks and send Microsoft feedback on the result.

For image searching, the help and suggestions continue. Sure you can simple search for images of a particular person or item, but Bing suggests popular people, animal, nature, and wallpaper searches for you.

Camera and Voice

You can search with your mic and camera in the Bing app. Of course Google offers voice search in its app, but I am surprised that it doesn't let you scan barcodes and QR codes the way Bing does. A setting lets you always show the camera and mic buttons alongside the main search magnifying glass if you prefer. I had no trouble finding more info on a particular model of drone with the app's camera, but voice search starts after a longer delay than I experienced with the Google app.

More Differences

Google's single search app integrates its notifications and Google Now cards, while the Bing app is a pure search play: For those features you need the separate Cortana app. I hope Microsoft will combine the two apps' functionalities in the future. One thing many people have long assumed is a major difference I find not to be much different at all: The actual search results. In more than a year of using Bing, I've never not found something with it that I was able to find in Google. In the early days, it was true that Bing trailed in depth of results, but lately I'm more likely to find richer answer pages in Bing, both on the Web and in the app.

Bing! Bing! Bing Goes the Mobile Internet!

Given reasonably similar search results, the choice of a search app should depend on how easy it makes getting to the information you need. Bing makes it easy, and makes taking the next steps easier, with its app integrations. Add the bonuses of QR scanning, more-accessible privacy controls, Bing Rewards for gift cards and more, and you've got our Editors' Choice for iPhone search apps.