I recently discovered you can access Google Assistant - previously only available for the expensive Pixel phones - on just about any Android v6/7 phone if you temporarily change the language to US English. I've been playing with it, as well as Google Now, which is apparently is set to replace and I have a few questions that perhaps people who've been using/following these apps for longer might be able to answer:
1) is there a way of saying "read this page out loud"?
2) can i translate the current page to another language ("read this page in french")?
3) can i get it it to open the browser (Firefox, in my case) and go to a page ("open Slashdot in Firefox", "Firefox open Slashdot" etc)?
4) can i get it to acknowledge me when i say "ok google" other than the limp little vibrate it does. There's an option to have it unlock the phone with "ok google" but if i'm not looking at the screen, or holding it (so i can feel the quick vibrate) I have no idea if it's picked my voice out of the background noises (say when i'm driving). It would make sense to have it just reply "yes [your nickname]".
5) when is the nickname used, anyway? I've never heard it say it.
6) Is there really no way of typing, instead of speaking, to Google Assistant?
7) I can't get it to play a video from Netflix on my Chromecast enabled TV, despite following the instructions online. It doesn't help that you can't follow them 100% because the options they describe differ between the online help and the Home app. Has anyone got this working?
8) I've set a work address in Google Maps but it's coming up empty in Google Assistant. Home is ok in both locations. They are both ok in Google Now too. What's odd is that it doesn't accept my work address when I type it, despite it being acceptable to Google Maps. This means that although I can enter a "close enough" address for the purpose of navigation, it's never going to allow location based reminders work.
9) Location based reminders don't seem to work anyway. It works for my home address sometimes, but i've never managed to get one set at a shop or train station to fire.
10) The shopping list interface is awful. It takes you to a really basic web page (it reminds me of my first attempt to create a list of items in html!) with no save option, and i now have some checked items I cannot remove. Perhaps if there was a save option I could do so. I actually thought this was a sort of javascript-less fallback option when I first saw it but it's not changed since then so I guess this is it.
For each of the questions above I've tried various ways but come up short. I'm using the latest stock rom for the Sony Xperia Z3, in the uk (the rom is the US one though).
1) is there a way of saying "read this page out loud"?
2) can i translate the current page to another language ("read this page in french")?
3) can i get it it to open the browser (Firefox, in my case) and go to a page ("open Slashdot in Firefox", "Firefox open Slashdot" etc)?
4) can i get it to acknowledge me when i say "ok google" other than the limp little vibrate it does. There's an option to have it unlock the phone with "ok google" but if i'm not looking at the screen, or holding it (so i can feel the quick vibrate) I have no idea if it's picked my voice out of the background noises (say when i'm driving). It would make sense to have it just reply "yes [your nickname]".
5) when is the nickname used, anyway? I've never heard it say it.
6) Is there really no way of typing, instead of speaking, to Google Assistant?
7) I can't get it to play a video from Netflix on my Chromecast enabled TV, despite following the instructions online. It doesn't help that you can't follow them 100% because the options they describe differ between the online help and the Home app. Has anyone got this working?
8) I've set a work address in Google Maps but it's coming up empty in Google Assistant. Home is ok in both locations. They are both ok in Google Now too. What's odd is that it doesn't accept my work address when I type it, despite it being acceptable to Google Maps. This means that although I can enter a "close enough" address for the purpose of navigation, it's never going to allow location based reminders work.
9) Location based reminders don't seem to work anyway. It works for my home address sometimes, but i've never managed to get one set at a shop or train station to fire.
10) The shopping list interface is awful. It takes you to a really basic web page (it reminds me of my first attempt to create a list of items in html!) with no save option, and i now have some checked items I cannot remove. Perhaps if there was a save option I could do so. I actually thought this was a sort of javascript-less fallback option when I first saw it but it's not changed since then so I guess this is it.
For each of the questions above I've tried various ways but come up short. I'm using the latest stock rom for the Sony Xperia Z3, in the uk (the rom is the US one though).
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