Google Assistant Lands on Older Android Devices
- Mehedi Hassan
- Dec 13, 2017
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Google is bringing Assistant to more Android devices today. Assistant already ships with most of the new Android 8.0 phones, along with phones running Android 6.0 Marshmallow.
But with today’s rollout, Google is bringing Assistant to Android tablets running Android 7.0 Nougat and 6.0 Marshmallow. The personal assistant has been available for phones running Android 6.0 and 7.0 for almost a year now, but tablets running 7.0 and 6.0 will be receiving Assistant starting today. In addition to tablets, Google is bringing Assistant to Android phones running Android 5.0 Lollipop to users in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, India, Mexico, Spain, Japan, Italy, Germany, Brazil, and Korea.
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Google bringing Assistant to Android 5.0 at this point might be a surprise to some, but the motive behind the company’s latest move is obvious. Even though Android 5.0 was released 3 years ago back in 2014, a substantial amount of Android devices are still running the outdated version of the operating system, mostly because of Android fragmentation.
According to Google’s own data, 6.1% of all Android devices are still on Android 5.0, while a whopping 20.2% are using the newer Android 5.1. Android 6.0, on the other hand, is the most used version of Android right now, powering nearly 30% of all Android devices as of December 2017.