ISSUE 68 • ANDROID ADVISOR 37baked directly into the Pixel operating system with
the help of a new Pixel Neural Core chip devoted
to on-device AI.
That means it can open and interact with any
app on your phone, and do so incredibly quickly.
You could ask the assistant to “show Beyonce
on Instagram” and it will immediately open the
Instagram app and go straight to Queen B’s
profile – and with the introduction of continuous
conversation to phones for the first time, you can
dart between apps just as quickly.
It is impressively fast, so much so that for the first
time I could actually see myself using the Assistant
to navigate my phone (at least when there’s no-one
around to hear me), but it comes with two major
caveats. Firstly, for the moment it’s US-only. You can
access it elsewhere in the world, but you’ll have to
switch your Assistant language to US English, which
will give you the American-accented Assistant across
all your Google devices.
Secondly, for some unfathomable reason it doesn’t
work with G Suite, Google’s corporate productivity
tools. And I don’t just mean you can’t use a G Suite
account as your primary phone account: if you’re
signed in with a G Suite email address on the phone
at all you won’t see the new Assistant, meaning that in
my case I’ve had to choose between using the faster
AI or checking my work emails. Sorry for the late
replies, everyone.
You can also now access the Google Assistant with
a new touch gesture – a swipe up from the corner of
the screen – but the ‘Hey Google’ wake word and the