Moto G5 Plus Won't Ship With Google Assistant, Update to Add Feature Later

Lenovo on Wednesday, as promised, launched the Moto G5 Plus smartphone in India. Lenovo's new Moto G5 and Moto G5 Plus smartphones were unveiled few weeks back at the MWC 2017 trade show, and Google Assistant was one of the biggest features marketed to ship with the devices. Now, the company has confirmed to Gadgets 360 that the Google Assistant feature will not ship with the Moto G5 Plus out-of-the-box.

According to Lenovo, the Moto G5 Plus will be receiving the feature in an update later. "The Moto G5 Plus will support Google Assistant. But it will not come preloaded with the Assistant as this will be a Play Store update and will be rolled out by Google," the company said in an email. Unfortunately, there is no word when the Moto G5 Plus will get the feature in India.

Google has already confirmed that its Google Assistant voice-based virtual assistant will be available on all devices running Android 6.0 Marshmallow or above. The feature rollout has already begun in some regions. The new Google Assistant feature on Marshmallow devices will replace Google Search, and can be launched by long-pressing the home button or can be activated via voice by saying "Ok Google" voice command. Notably, users will not have to download an app for the feature as Google Assistant will automatically show up on the eligible devices.

Google Assistant, the company's voice-based virtual assistant, made its debut on the Google Allo app, and then was available on the company's Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones, marketed as the biggest highlight of the new hardware. Apart from Pixel devices, the Google Assistant has now made its way to LG's new G6 flagship as well.