We’re upgrading Google Assistant users on mobile to Gemini, offering a new kind of help only possible with the power of AI.
Google Assistant: Let’s build a product around functionality.
Gemini: Let’s build functionality around a product.
Any guess which method works better?
Works better to satisfy shareholders?
I have no idea of the difference other than I feel slightly like a downgrade when I cant do simple things that Inused to be able to. The biggest difference isnlikely to be my privacy and data.
Google on tap was all I needed and they have removed and it readded it multiple times…it is currently the only gemini feature I use. And its not a gemini feature.
I don’t want that at all. Well I guess I can’t use hands free anymore. Thanks google.
Once again, thank goodness for GrapheneOS.
Never have I appreciated not having features so much.
Seriously considering this for my next phone. I currently have a Pixel, so I’m thinking I’ll get another Pixel, try grapheneOS on the one I have to get comfortable with it, before doing it to the new phone.
The switch was much easier than expected.
Terrible idea. Every time I look at toggling it on just to test, it explicitly lists features that I use as ones which will be disabled by the switch.
I find Gemini has better communication and comprehension ability compared with assistant, but can do even less when it comes to controlling the phone. No reminders, no calendar events, no messages, no integration with anything. Just talking.
I would have preferred assistant talk and understand better, instead of a completly gimped alternative that does that and nothing more.
Exactly, and maybe I’m a outlier, but I have no intention of speaking to my device like it’s a human. Ever.
Same. I’d say the enshittification of devices has gone far enough.
Google assistant was already a good listener, it seems to have gotten worse, but compared to anything else I’ve tried to do with voice it was & is still the best at understanding, and can be set to be bilingual.
I honestly don’t understand this but it’s very Google to push the change before the replacement is fully baked. They did that with YouTube Music too.
Integrations with the phone’s functionality is key. I don’t care how clever the brain is, it needs to talk to the rest of the body.
I’m somewhat of a boomer, what sort of things can you do through assistant?
Usually quick things in the car when I don’t have hands.
- Ask about weather
- Set a reminder
- Reply to a text
Set or change alarms, add reminders to your calendar, ask about those things, send text messages, start phone calls, have it read out last text messages received.
When I was a truck driver, my wife could test me, and I could just listen to a transcript of what she sent instead of calling her and asking what she typed.
“Hey Google, read my last text”
“Hey Google, send a text to <wife>, 'Quit texting me while I’m driving, woman!” Stuff like that. 🤣
I use it to set reminders and alarms. I don’t keep the “OK google” stuff on, I just hold the power button for a second or two until the assistant pops up (or at least used to, I haven’t done it in a while so I’m not sure if it’s stupid gemini now instead), then just say like, “remind me friday at 3pm to call the doctor” and it does it.
Mine does reminders and events now. It can also do Google home stuff.
I got the change and immediately put it back to Google assistant. I don’t want AI. I want to tell my phone when to set my alarm clock.
How so I do this? Pixel 9
Settings> type “assistant settings” in search> digital assistants from google> click on Google assistant
Tysm
No fucking thanks! Gemini is garbage.
But Google likes garbage…
Gemini works as a general search engine, but it’s trash at everything else.
Translation: your phone runs fine right now… Well not anymore! Introducing more Bloatware! Your phone has never crawled like this before.
When your hands are wet or you can’t grab your phone…the one thing I used Google assistant for, Gemini can’t do.
If you still have Google Assistant, it will tell you it can’t set an alarm, and then tell you to try setting an alarm using Google Assistant
Oh I still have Google assistant as my main assistant. I just switched it to Gemini for the screenshot
I also use Gemini Assistant to set my timers and have never had an issue.
Good thing I never used Google Assistant then.
I actually use it a bunch for setting reminders and it does pretty good at that.
For sure, but I am also capable of doing that with my thumbs… which is what I do.
Same here. Really looking forward to not using their new product. How exciting.
I feel bad for visually impaired.
Astute point, they’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater here and hurting the disabled community to push their inferior product that nobody really asked for.
Just because I don’t use it doesn’t mean others who need it also don’t.
It happens, we forget the sheet diversity of experiences because we’re human. I try to have multiperspectivity, but even that is limited to one’s own experiences and imaginative abilities, on the best days.
I feel jealous for the hearing impaired. Just think of everyone and they’re dog showing off how dumb it is all the time.
Or people who don’t have, or have lost, motor function in their hands.
Gemini eats glue. We need a much more reliable model to replace Assistant.
Didn’t read the article and I haven’t really used Android in a almost a decade, but aren’t most android devices on seriously old versions and sold with 2GB RAM or less. Or are shit Android devices less common nowadays?
Last time I seriously considered an Android device was 8ish years ago and devices running Android 2 were still being sold new.
Modern barrel bottom Android phones in the past few years require an ARM64 system, and come with minimum 4GB / 64GB RAM and Storage. Good phones will have 8, 12, even 16 GB RAM and up to 1TB Storage.
My old, crappy phone that retailed for $250 (got for much cheaper) had 4GB RAM (released 2019 or 2020), and my current one has 8GB RAM. The one before that had 2GB IIRC, and was released around 2017, and it was crappy for the time.
I miss now on tap
