Google Assistant coming to Android Marshmallow and Nougat smartphones

So far, Google's digital voice assistant called Google Assistant was exclusive to the company's products like the Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones, Google Allo messaging app, Android Wear 2.0 Platform and Google Home smart speaker. But that's about to change soon.

Earlier this week, at MWC 2017 Google announced that it will bring Google Assistant to all Android smartphones running Marshmallow and Nougat with Google Play services. This rules out smartphones sold in China as they don't support Google services, due to government regulation. The phones should also have atleast 1.5GB RAM and HD (720p) display.

Google Assistant already comes pre-loaded on the LG G6, Nokia 3, Nokia 5 and Nokia 6, that were introduced earlier this week at MWC in Barcelona.

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. Google said it will add more languages over the coming year. The Assistant will be included in the next update to the Google app, namely version 6.13.

The Assistant is Google's take on Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana and Amazon's Alexa. You can bring up Google Assistant on your device by long pressing the home button or by just saying "Ok Google", and you can give voice commands for one-on-one conversations or to perform any tasks including setting reminders, translation, new alerts, performing web search and more.

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