I think it had most of those things. I think they just reworked that button to change how the voice button fit into the keyboard. You can also hold that key down as a shortcut to the voice input.

Holding down your phone's search button is the shortcut to get the the general Android voice search/actions. It's so incredible to be able to - from anywhere in the phone - say "navigate to Starbucks," and the phone automatically finds the nearest business by that name and brings of the navigation app with the destination all set. Fantastic.

I also like commands like "set alarm for 7am," and the phone does just that.