Great news and yet another reason to pick up a Nexus phone. The Nexus team at Google has announced that Wi-Fi Assistant is coming to all Nexus phones in the coming weeks. Wi-Fi Assistant to this point has been exclusive to Project Fi users which allows their devices to automatically connect to Google approved Wi-Fi hotspots securely and without any user intervention. It is a huge benefit to Fi frankly as it saves on data plan usage. It will connect your phone to Wi-Fi without you even knowing it. Now all Nexus owners will benefit from the feature.
In a post on Google+, the team indicated that the feature would be rolling out over the course of the next few weeks to owners in the US, UK, Canada, Nordic countries and Mexico. While clearly
Project Fi Open Wi-Fi Symbol
Google has to enable this functionality on the back end, it is entirely possible there will be a small system update pushed out to devices to enable the feature. We will just have to wait and see. The other question is exactly which phones will be able to take advantage of the feature. Given that Project Fi works on the Nexus 6, 6P and 5X, it is save to assume that all of these devices will be able to take advantage of it. It is unlikely that the Nexus 5 will be able to do so.
For me as a Project Fi user (which you can read my review of here as well as my six month update), Wi-Fi Assistant has been a huge feature and money saver and it is great to see all Nexus owners get it for their phones. Don’t have a Nexus device? You can pick up a 5x for just $199 over on eBay right now. May be time to seriously consider it. This feature along can save you a huge amount of data regardless of your carrier.
