Previously, Google Assistant was only really available on Google’s own flagship Pixel phone. However, the company recently announced that Google Assistant will be coming to a wide variety of Android phones running 6.0 Marshmallow and 7.0 Nougat. The assistant will arrive via Google Play services in the coming weeks. Google described their staged rollout, saying:
“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.”
One exciting feature accompanying the update will be the ability to access Google Assistant by long pressing the phone’s home button. This is a welcome change from hunting for a microphone button on the phone or hoping that the phone recognized “Ok, Google” when you were trying to issue a command.
There’s no word on a full list of what devices will be receiving the update, but Google stated that “With this update, hundreds of millions of Android users will now be able to try out the Google Assistant.” So if you have a recent phone it’s looking pretty likely that the new feature will be available to play with.
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