Owners of smartphones and tablet devices powered by more recent versions of the Android mobile operating system have long taken full advantage of the capabilities of Google Assistant. But for some Android mobile users who are still utilizing old versions of the mobile OS, they have yet to experience what it is like to have Google’s digital assistant at their disposal.
Thankfully, Google has recently announced that it is now bringing its Google Assistant to handsets that are running on Android 5.0 Lollipop, as well as to tablets are running on Android 6.0 Marshmallow and Android 7.0 Nougat. While it is true that Android Lollipop is more than three years old, over 26 percent of all Android powered devices still run on this version. As for Android Marshmallow, adoption is now at more than 30 percent. It goes without saying that there is still a lot of people out there who are still waiting to use Google Assistant for the first time.
Users of Android Lollipop running mobile devices should be able to see an update very soon. It bears noting that the update that comes with support for Google Assistant will only be made available to those who set their language settings to English in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Singapore, and India. The same also applies for those who set their language to Spanish in the US, Mexico, and of course, Spain. According to Google, it is looking to start deploying the update to Android mobile users based in countries such as Japan, Germany, Italy, Brazil, and South Korea.
Owners of devices running on old Android versions should also be warned that due to the fact that Google Assistant is not integrated directly into the launcher, they will need to launch the Google Assistant mobile app before they can start asking assistance for weather updates, directions, recipes, and others.
But wait -- what about users of tablets that are running on Android Marshmallow and Android Nougat? Well, they should be able to receive the update some time next week, that is, if they are based in the US, and have set their language settings to English.
Google Assistant was officially unveiled during Google’s I/O Conference last year, along with the first generation Pixel smartphones, which also became the first ever handsets to feature the digital assistant. Back in May earlier this year, it was reported that Google Assistant was also coming to iOS powered mobile devices.
