Google Assistant may soon be coming to your old Android phone

For all you Google Assistant’s fans, we have a piece of real good news for you. Well, you don’t need to go and buy exorbitantly expensive Pixel range in order to have Google’s AI assistant because it has already started making way into older Android versions like Nexus 6P (running Android 7.1.1) and Samsung Galaxy Note5.

As first reported by Android Police, it looks as though an alpha version of the Google app has appeared by mistake with version 6.13 update and this being an alpha release, users are reporting a load of bugs and plenty of unexpected behaviour.

Apparently, the software comes with introductory messages that are clearly targeted at people who previously didn't have Assistant, so it's not an accidental inclusion, but it definitely needs a lot of polishing. Also because, the initial hype around Pixel is dying slowly, so Google wants more people to use its latest app, which looks set to eventually replace Google Now.

The alpha also includes a recent topics section that revisits recent searches, previously mentioned support for payments (not that it's useful without providers) and a data-saving Lite mode that optimises pages.

Though testers managed to get the Assistant working on a couple of models but there are plenty of phones where it isn't working yet. We might hear more from Google on the spread of Assistant during Mobile World Congress at the end of February or at Google I/O later in the year.