Google brings plenty of news in time for MWC 2018

Mobile World Congress week is upon us, and Google has made several key announcements to mark the start.

First of all, the company has confirmed that Google Assistant will dramatically increase its footprint, saying the assistant will be available in 30 languages by the end of the year.

“In the next few months, we’ll bring the Assistant to Danish, Dutch, Hindi, Indonesian, Norwegian, Swedish and Thai on Android phones and iPhones, and we’ll add more languages on more devices throughout the year,” the company wrote on its website.

“We’re also making the Assistant multilingual later this year, so families or individuals that speak more than one language can speak naturally to the Assistant. With this new feature, the Assistant will be able to understand you in multiple languages fluently.”

The firm also revealed the Assistant Mobile OEM platform, which will essentially let OEM partners build device-specific commands.

“Coming soon, we’ll also have new integrations from LG, Sony Mobile and Xiaomi,” Google elaborated.

ARCore gets real

It’s not the only news for Google at MWC, as the firm also revealed that its ARCore SDK for augmented reality is launching at the expo.

“ARCore, Google’s augmented reality SDK for Android, is out of preview and launching as version 1.0. Developers can now publish AR apps to the Play Store, and it’s a great time to start building.”

The company says it’ll be working with several more device manufacturers for ARCore, “including Samsung, Huawei, LGE, Motorola, ASUS, Xiaomi, HMD/Nokia, ZTE, Sony Mobile, and Vivo”.

The final bit of news is that we can expect to see Android Go smartphones as soon as next week, ostensibly being launched during MWC.

“Starting next week, you’ll see the first set of Android Oreo (Go edition) phones, and soon after they’ll be available for you to purchase.”