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?
Gemini works as a general search engine, but it’s trash at everything else.
Gemini eats glue. We need a much more reliable model to replace Assistant.
Translation: your phone runs fine right now… Well not anymore! Introducing more Bloatware! Your phone has never crawled like this before.
I don’t want that at all. Well I guess I can’t use hands free anymore. Thanks google.
No fucking thanks! Gemini is garbage.
But Google likes garbage…
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.
🤣 Gemini is the worst of all the ais. It can’t even do the most basic shit like set reminders.
Google has fallen so hard. They are just pure ad garbage now.
Timers are literally the only thing I use it for.
Just like Google Assistant
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.
Mine does reminders and events now. It can also do Google home stuff.
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.
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.
Well, too bad, i have replaced Google on my phone.
What setup you currently running?
GrapheneOS is the only one that can really sever the Google connection. LineageOS is kind of a halfway point but still relies on an amount of Google to function.
Meh, the GPS SUPL thing might be the only one for me, but i prefer good location. I use Cromite and never used Captive Portals.
https://old.reddit.com/r/degoogle/comments/cldohl/how_to_degoogle_lineageos_in_2019/
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
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.
Is there a tradein program to get my old phone back?
Good thing I never used Google Assistant then.
Same here. Really looking forward to not using their new product. How exciting.
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.
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.
Or people who don’t have, or have lost, motor function in their hands.
I feel jealous for the hearing impaired. Just think of everyone and they’re dog showing off how dumb it is all the time.
Gemini might be good at something, but I’ll never know because it is bad at all the things I have ever used the assistant for. If it’s good at anything at all, it’s something I don’t need or want.
Looking forward to 2027 when Google Gemini is replaced by Google Assistant (not to be confused with today’s Google Assistant, totally different product).
Seriously, I tried Gemini for a while but it is mostly useless. It can it open my apps, cannot control Home Assistant, cannot send a message to someone.
Yeah, it has a total lack of any of the integrations that made Assistant actually useful.
Even if an LLM offers meaningful improvements on the core conversational elements of Assistant, launching it without all the needed integrations is idiotic and completely hamstrings the functionality.
I swapped to Gemini for a month or two. Kept thinking to myself “maybe I’m not speaking clearly,” and other justifications. Turns out it just sucks. Now I just do everything manually. Fuck em.
