X

Google Assistant is coming to a lot more Android phones

The virtual assistant previously exclusive to Pixel phones will soon be making its way to phones running Android 7.0 Nougat and Android 6.0 Marshmallow in the US, Australia, Canada and the UK.

Aloysius Low Senior Editor
Aloysius Low is a Senior Editor at CNET covering mobile and Asia. Based in Singapore, he loves playing Dota 2 when he can spare the time and is also the owner-minion of two adorable cats.
Aloysius Low
Watch this: Start chatting with Google Assistant

You can soon ask your phones running Android Marshmallow and Nougat for help really soon.

Once exclusive to Google's Pixel phones, Google Assistant will soon be released to the wilds of Android 6.0 and 7.0 devices in the US as soon as this week, while users in Canada, Australia, Germany and the UK will get the feature soon as well.

Google Assistant lets you talk to your phone in a conversational way, providing answers to questions about the weather, flight information and appointments. The assistant can even control your smart home, putting it head-to-head with Alexa. As tech giants continue to promote their own AI assistants such as Alexa, Siri and Cortana to get more users on board, Google's move to make Assistant on more phones will easily let the company secure a huge user base.

lg-g6-4452.jpg

Google Assistant will soon be available on more phones running Android 6.0 and above.

James Martin/CNET

There's no need to update your Android phone to receive the update -- Google says Assistant will be usable on phones with Google Play Services installed once available. The move to make Assistant available on more handsets follows an announcement earlier today with LG's new G6 phone sporting the feature.

Besides smartphones, Assistant is already available on the Google Home smart speaker, Android Wear 2.0 devices, and will soon come to TVs and cars as well.