Used this a number of times in a pinch. It'll definitely be missed. Makes me want a smartphone a little more.
There should be more voice apps like GOOG 411, not less.
Main example: it used to be if you had someone's address in your contacts, you could hold down the search button until the voice search prompt came up, then say "Navigate to <person's name> and it would pull up Google Navigation on that person's address.
Around 2.2 Google seems to have removed the ability to search your contacts from Google Maps. I'm not sure if this is a bug or a decision that searching your own contacts won't generate ad revenue. In any case, what happens now is it gives you a popup of search results for that name in your vicinity and asks you to choose, usually there are like 20.
That’s part of the point isn’t it? Google extends the service for free (for a limited time) and people without smartphones grow to like it (glad that 1800FREE411 is still there) and then when the free service is withdrawn that iota more of dump-phone users are more inclined to buy a smartphone.
Smartphones may be growing like crazy, but there are still vastly more dumb-phones actually in peoples’ hands. Big market, right?