After months of exclusivity, the Google Assistant also reaches smartphones whose names are not composed of “Google” and “pixels”.
At the recent Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Google has announced that it will bring the digital butler over the next few days to numerous devices with Android 6.0 Marshmallow and Android 7.0 nougat.
The Assistant will be distributed to English-speaking users in the US, followed by Australia, Canada and the UK, as well as to German-speaking users in Germany this week. “To date, the Assistant has only two languages: English and German. In this respect, a global release would also make less sense and create more confusion. However, no mention is made of Austria and Switzerland, although this could change promptly. After all, “other languages” will be added during the year.
The Google Assistant is distributed automatically through the Google Play services. A dedicated update of the Google app through the Play Store is not required. The only requirement is that Android 6.0 Marshmallow or Android 7.0 Nougat is installed – according to the latest version distribution accounts for about 30 percent of the active Android devices.
The update will replace the regular Google search. Say: When you press the Home button or the Hotword “Okay Google”, the Google Assistant starts. The first non-Google built smartphone with preinstalled wizard is the LG G6 launched at the MWC.
That the pixel exclusivity comes to an end, is pleasant, comes, however, little surprising. In the run-up, an alpha version of the Google app already circulated, which also made the assistant available on other smartphones.
In addition, the LG G6 has already been said to support the language assistants. Anyway, this is the logical result after the Google Assistant has already landed on Android 2.0 and will soon be available on Android TV
