Microsoft has added Visual Search to Bing's mobile apps, meaning you can now use it on your smartphone. Visual Search is essentially Microsoft's answer to Google Lens, while Pinterest also offers visual discovery tools. Still, it's better late than never.

Visual Search allows you to search for information about the objects you capture in images without having to pick the right keywords and type them into Bing manually. You can use Visual Search on photos in your camera roll or that you've just taken.

Using Microsoft's examples, if you take a photo of a flower you don't recognize, Visual Search will provide more information about the flower. And if you find a sofa you like the look of but can't afford, Visual Search will find similar styles for those on a budget.

This new and improved version of Visual Search is available on the Bing app on iOS and Android, Microsoft Edge for iOS and Android, and the Microsoft Launcher for Android. Microsoft states that Visual Search will be coming to Bing.com in the future as well.

Vince Leung, product lead for Bing Images at Microsoft, said:

"Sometimes, it is almost impossible to describe what you want to search for using words. While there have been strides for many years to get to this point, with the advent of cloud computing we are able to accelerate our ability to make sense out of pixels."

Microsoft Gives People Options

Microsoft may be a little late with this, but competition is always good for consumers. So, while the average Android user is unlikely to switch from Google Lens to Bing Visual Search, we should applaud Microsoft for giving people the option to do so.

Speaking of Google's alternative to Bing Visual Search, if you haven't yet played around with it, here are some interesting things to do with Google Lens. And Google Lens is just one of the many amazing Google Photos features you should be using.