Google Assistant To Be Available On Older Versions of Android Soon

Matthew Miller, writing for ZDNet: Google has announced that Google Assistant is coming to smartphones running Android 7.0 Nougat and Android 6.0 Marshmallow, starting this week. The Google Assistant will begin rolling out this week to English users in the US, followed by English in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, as well as German speakers in Germany. Google continue to add more languages in the future.

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[davester666]

Never happen, because Trump is a closet Moslim.

Need to bring it back to Froyo

[Anonymous Coward]

My phone still hasn't been updated after all these years.

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[interkin3tic]

IIRC the assistant features on allo were all done online, not the phone itself. The strategy behind allo seems to have been expanding into places where bleeding edge phones weren't the norm, like India, or, you know, normal people whose lives don't revolve around awaiting the latest mobile processor from quallcom or whoever.

So yeah, it seems weird to say "ooh, it's coming to OLDER phone systems" when talking about 16 month old versions of android. That's not "old" that's "I just bought it not too long ag

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[arglebargle_xiv]

Nonononono, don't bring it back to Froyo or anything else. The one nice thing about having a phone that was abandonware the minute I paid for it is that you can't have more Google crap than it already has shovelled onto it any more.

Why no in Canada right now?

[courteaudotbiz]

Can't they just discard the "Eh?" at the end of each question?

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[AmiMoJo]

B... B... But! I was told that Android phones didn't get updates, now someone tells me they are getting updates but they suck?!?

Then Scotty won't need to talk to the mouse

[jfdavis668]

That's going to ruin Star Trek IV! George Lucas will have to go back and add computer graphics and make Han shoot first!

Gross...

[wardrich86]

Google Now is far better in almost every way.

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[wbr1]

Care to elaborate with specific complaints?

I have a Nexus 6 (moto, not Huwai 6P). I used google now for a long time but only for a few use cases. I now have the assistant (I spoofed a pixel XL in my build.prop file). I have seen little difference. She is a bit more chattey, but I say play muci, she plays music, I say navigate, she does, I say search for something, it happens.

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[wardrich86]

As I understand, Assistant strips away Google Now. I also understand that Assistant is all voice-driven. Hopefully I'm wrong, but if not my two biggest concerns are:

- No more tapping on words to get translations/quick google searches
- Now I have to look like an idiot talking to myself/my phone to do things I could have done silently in the past

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[wbr1]

Soup pannedit without even using it? Of course you can still tell and tap. You look more like an idiot for speaking without knowing than you would speaking into your phone.

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[wardrich86]

"soup pannedit"? Wha?

And like I said, I was going on what I was told. If you can still use "on-tap" to grab a screenshot of text on your screen, and tap on words to get context related searches, then that's a-ok by my books.

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[mdm-adph]

You know, I'm sure there's a difference between Google Now and Google Assistant, but I can't even muster up enough enthusiasm to look it up. These things never work very well.

Let us know when they're at Jarvis-level, and we'll bother with installing one again.

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[wardrich86]

Assistant is all voice-controlled as far as I know. No more tap-on-the-words to translate/search for them.

What happened to Speaktoit Assistant ???

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaktoit [wikipedia.org] released a great smartphone app called "Assistant [wikipedia.org]" in 2011.

It was very highly rated and even ran without problems on my old Kitkat phone.

In many ways, it was far superior to Siri.

Assistant had over 13 million users in 11 different languages as of October 2014.

It was the No. 6 top grossing app in the Lifestyle category on Google Play in the US.

Speaktoit suddenly discontinued Assistant on December 15, 2016, just as Google was preparing to put "Google Assistant" on Nougat & Marshmallow. ( Lesso

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[JDHannan]

API.ai, originally known as Speaktoit, had some success with Assistant, which was downloaded more than 10 million times from the Google Play store
On September 19 2016, Google announced it had acquired API.ai, a startup that launched Assistant in 2011, one of the earliest independent virtual digital assistants (VDAs).
this from here [tractica.com]