Google Assistant Coming to Android Tablets, Android 5.0 Lollipop Phones

Google Assistant, the tech giant's virtual personal assistant, is rolling out to Android tablets, after having launched on phones, smart speakers, Android Wear watches among others. Google Assistant will be available for all Android-powered tablets running Android 7.0 Nougat and Android 6.0 Marshmallow. The personal assistant is also rolling out for phones running Android 5.0 Lollipop.

For Android tablets running Nougat and Marshmallow, the Google Assistant update will be available in the coming weeks to users with their device language set to English in the US only. On the other hand, phones running Android Lollipop will get Google Assistant for users that have set their device's language to English in the US, UK, India, Australia, Canada and Singapore, as well as in Spanish in the US, Mexico and Spain. It's also rolling out to users in Italy, Japan, Germany, Brazil, and Korea.

Google Assistant made its debut in May 2016 at Google's developer conference. The virtual assistant was launched alongside the Allo messaging app and the Google home smart speaker. It was first seen on the Google Play Store back in October and has since seen a ton of upgrades in the form of features and optimisation. Recently, in an event held in New Delhi, Google Assistant was upgraded with better optimisation for Indian users. A special edition of Google Assistant is also being developed for the Jio Phone.

As per Android version distribution data, Google Assistant will now be available to around 80 percent of active Android devices in the world, helping the Mountain View giant take on Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri with billions of users now availing the feature.