Google Assistant might be a solid enough virtual assistant but not everyone has been able to experience it since its launch earlier this year. Indeed, up to this point Assistant has only been available to Android phone users running Android…
Google Assistant might be a solid enough virtual assistant but not everyone has been able to experience it since its launch earlier this year. Indeed, up to this point Assistant has only been available to Android phone users running Android 6.0 Marshmallow or higher. With only 29.7 percent of Android users currently running Marshmallow and a mere 0.5 percent running Android 8.0 Oreo, this is problematic.
Fortunately, Google has set out to fix this by pushing out an update containing Assistant to users running Android 5.0 Lollipop. According to a Google Assistant blog post, the update has already begun to roll out to users with their device’s language set to English in the U. S., UK, India, Australia, Canada and Singapore, as well as to users with their device’s language set to Spanish in the U. S., Mexico and Spain.
Lollipop users in Italy, Japan, Germany, Brazil and Korea will also be receiving the update soon. If you don’t live in any of those countries, you might be out of luck for the time being. Google didn’t mention when Android users in other parts of the world would be receiving the update, if at all.
It’s not just Android phone users that are getting the Google Assistant treatment. According to Google Assistant Program Manager Maksim Mukha, „The Assistant on tablets will be rolling out over the coming weeks to users with [their device’s language] set to English in the U. S.“