Huawei announced the launch of its official on-device search engine, Petal Search, for users in more than 170 countries and regions around the world. Now South Africa joins that ever-growing list of countries where Huawei Mobile Services-powered devices (HMS) are set to receive an even more enriched smartphone experience.

With support for more than 50 languages, Petal Search provides users with search capabilities to find apps, news, videos, images, shopping information, flights, details on local businesses, and more.

Huawei has also ensured that the Petal Search experience is embedded into multiple areas of the mobile ecosystem on newer devices, with users capable of finding information and services they need conveniently through the app itself, the home screen search widget, Huawei browser, the leftmost screen and more.

A new experience

This unique system leverages the AI capabilities natively found on Huawei devices, as Petal Search supports a visual search feature that enables users to search via photos they have taken or images found in their Gallery. Added to this is intuitive image and object recognition, allowing Petal Search to identify people, animals, landmarks, products, and recipes, along with making recommendations and offering assistance therein.

This feature helps Petal Search cater to the needs of users who are accustomed to the highly efficient and a mobile-centric lifestyle of the digital era.

Huawei isn’t stopping there either, with future updates featuring plant identification capabilities for the visual search feature, which will no doubt come in handy for those living in South Africa.

Petal Search also supports voice search features for English, Spanish, French, Arabic, with more languages being planned in the coming months too.

Along with the ability to assist with searches native to the device, the mobile service provides dedicated search channels for categories such as news, shopping, travel, sports, local businesses, videos, music and images.

It also shares with users more than 300 types of information cards, aggregating and visualising news and services according to the users’ needs in a more interactive and engaging fashion.

Perhaps most importantly, Petal Search provides localised search services for users around the world.

A local flavour

This extends to South Africa too, with the Huawei AppGallery for example paying particular attention to locally developed applications, and making them more easily accessible to South Africa users. On this front, the search engine pulls up high-quality and relevant results when users look up localised queries.

The Huawei Video platform too will provide a quality mix of global and local content to users.

Petal Search also provides additional services, such as weather forecasts, as well as translation to meet the day-to-day needs of HMS users.

Another significant aspect built into the heart of this mobile service is compliance and security, with Huawei ensuring that the service strictly adheres to the policies, laws, and regulations in every country it is available in, including South Africa.

It is also certified with the ePrivacyseal data protection seal of approval and complies with GDPR requirements in particular.

Huawei has added some additional security features to the mix for Petal Search, with the  search engine providing safe search and incognito mode for users to choose from.

A new way to engage with your Huawei device, find out more about Petal Search here.