Google has added offline voice typing to Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, making the voice dictation system work even when your phone lacks a data connection. The company’s engineers had to shrink down the voice recognition engine significantly to make the system fit locally onto a phone, Google explained at IO today, meaning users will now no longer have to make sure they have a speedy data connection in order to take advantage of it.

In the on-stage demonstration, Google showed how a Galaxy Nexus running the new offline voice typing system in Jelly Bean could track a full sentence, transcribing it in seconds. In contrast, Apple’s voice recognition system in iOS – currently available on the iPhone 4S and new iPad – demands a web connection for the company’s servers to do the heavy crunching.

Offline voice typing will initially only be supported for US English, with Google planning to add further languages later on. Meanwhile there’s new Hebrew, Persian, Hindi and Thai language text support introduced in Jelly Bean.

Android 4.1 Jelly Bean now has offline voice typing, using the same speech recognition that Google uses in search, even when you're not connected. It recognizes U.S. English in the initial release, and more languages are coming soon. The live demonstration was impressive. It recognized natural speech, and in one accidental, impressive flourish, it auto-corrected a word it misheard once it figured out what made sense in context.