Google have made a big deal about their new Assistant coming to the Pixel 4 in Australia later this year via an OTA update but the problem is that many users will not be able to use it without performing some software installation acrobatics.
Android Police have unearthed the new Google Assistant help document that states the issue while trying to figure out why they were unable to access the new Google Assistant on their Pixel 4 review unit. Not only will you HAVE to be using Google’s new Gesture Navigation to be able to use the new Assistant but you also need to not have a G-suite work or school account installed and logged in on the phone.
Yes, not just not have one as your primary account but not even installed on your phone. This means that if you are a student, or have a work email that is through G-suite then you are out of luck — at this stage. Android Police have been told that Google are working on a fix for it.
It is unclear what the fix for it is longterm but you would have expected Google themselves would have come across it long before now considering at least one or two Googlers would have a G-suite account of some sort.
At the moment there is a workaround — supplied by Google themselves — which requires assigning the G-suite address to a different profile and thus one profile will have access to the new Assistant while the other one won’t which would result in a big workflow change for most users.
There is no timeframe for the inbound fix coming from Google but you would expect and hope it arrives before the new Assistant arrives here in Summer. If it does not then everyone here at Ausdroid will struggle and those of us who also work for a university are double up the creek without a paddle — workflow will be an absolute nightmare. I’m not sure I want the new Assistant that much.