One of the better improvements that Google Home brought to the Assistant was the (IMHO) much improved hot word of ‘Hey Google’ as an option to engage the Assistant and now it’s rolling out to phones.
Appearing on handsets is a prompt from Google to re-train your Assistant to now listen for both ‘Ok Google’ and ‘Hey Google’. At this stage it’s only appeared for me on my Pixel 2 review unit, but not the original Pixel or other Nexus handsets.
Once the prompt shows up, the training is exactly the same as when training for the original ‘Ok Google’ hotword, however it alternates between Ok and Hey Google phrases.
Hey Google is a more natural call for Google Assistant, though it would be preferred to allow users to choose their own hotword for the Assistant. While that’s not going to happen in the near future, at least this is a decent alternative.
