One of the best features of the Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones is the Google Assistant, Google’s own voice-activated assistant that competes with Apple’s Siri. With today’s announcement however, it looks like Google Assistant will be available on more devices starting this week.
The great thing about Google Assistant is that it allows users to talk to their Pixel and Pixel XL phones in a conversational or natural way. Whether it’s asking questions, making reservations and appointments, Google Assistant is can do it all.
It has proven to be quite an impressive AI assistant and has even been lauded by some as even being smarter than Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa and Microsoft’s Cortana. Unfortunately, Google Assistant was only available on Google’s own Pixel phones at the time.
With the Mobile World Congress 2017 introducing phones like the LG G6 and the Moto G5/G5 Plus, Google Assistant is becoming more accessible on other smartphones. For those with older smartphones however, there’s good news: Google Assistant will also be available to them soon.
“Now we’re bringing it to even more people. Starting this week, the Google Assistant is coming to smartphones running Android 7.0 Nougat and Android 6.0 Marshmallow,” Google said on its blog.
“The Google Assistant will begin rolling out this week to English users in the U.S., followed by English in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, as well as German speakers in Germany. We’ll continue to add more languages over the coming year.”
Google Assistant running running on the HTC 10, Galaxy S7 and the LG V20. Photo: Google
By bringing the Assistant to all smartphones running Android Marshmallow and Nougat, around 31.9 percent of all Android phones will be getting it, as pointed out by 9To5Google. This includes handsets from last year like Samsung’s Galaxy S7, the LG V20, HTC 10 and many more. For those who’re still rocking the Nexus 5X and the Nexus 6P, the addition of Google Assistant should freshen up those 2015 handsets as well.
