Pixel 9 phones: The Gemini AI stuff, reviewed
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I've owned every Pixel. I can't say I'll own this one. I definitely won't pay any more for my phone, much less an extra $240 a year.
lol
lol
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Gemini is useless. It cannot play media, or the radio or any other things the Assistant actually became better after buying the phone (Pixel 8 Pro - currently).
If it is good at other stuff, that's great, but breaking the stuff that works flat out sucks
If it is good at other stuff, that's great, but breaking the stuff that works flat out sucks
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Once you no longer have access to the advanced Gemini features (because your subscription ran out), I'm left wondering how useful the various AI features that remain will be. This same question would apply to the standard Pixel 9 I suppose, since it doesn't come with the free trial. I feel the loss/hampering of Assistant would be much more noticeable once Gemini Live turned itself off.
At any rate, if I were to upgrade it would not be because of the AI features. Paying an extra $240 a year just to get the full functionality out of my phone feels dirty.
At any rate, if I were to upgrade it would not be because of the AI features. Paying an extra $240 a year just to get the full functionality out of my phone feels dirty.
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Why would I, as not-a-tech-journalist or a blogger need an AI to write things like that?
In my day to day life I'm not writing about that sort of thing.
In my work life I'm dealing with confidential/company info and using a laptop not a phone.
How does this functionality fit into the life of an everyday person and not a tech writer for a website?
In my day to day life I'm not writing about that sort of thing.
In my work life I'm dealing with confidential/company info and using a laptop not a phone.
How does this functionality fit into the life of an everyday person and not a tech writer for a website?
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This is so Google, offering up a half-baked replacement that can't do the stuff that people actually used the old product for. With a side order of enshittification by charging $20(!) a month for the privilege.
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Nice review. One thing you could do is a review of the AI features without the Gemini Advanced subscription or a review of the AI features of the non-pro model.
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Awesome... marginally useful stuff that most people could take or leave, but totally harmful features for those inclined to edit photos to stir up trouble and post straight to social media. A solution in search of a problem.
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The only interest I have in AI on a phone is to use it as a smarter Assistant that does a better job interpreting natural language instructions and it does not sound like Gemini ticks that box. The screenshot summaries are particularly weird to me. I suppose that if I were a tech journalist or writing documentation I might be interested in organizing/summarizing my screenshots, but I can't see any use case for an ordinary user.
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Just set up my new phone and honestly besides it asking if I wanted to use Gemini during the initial setup, I don't see it being thrown in my face. Actually, I don't even know how to activate it. Perhaps because I switched the power button long press to give me the power menu way back when that option was first introduced and my settings roll over to my new phone every time I transfer. I said sure during that initial setup, figured what the hell, I'll give it a try and figured I'd be annoyed by it. Guess if you already didn't really use the Assistant, you won't see Gemini either. We'll see what happens next time I use AA.
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On my Pixel 7 Pro, which I realize uses a more rudimentary form of Gemini, I disabled it because I found it less capable and slower than Google Assistant. Might give it another try, but it did not make a good first impression.
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I bet a lot of people are going to have fun "reimagining" rocks and hammers into hands of protestors and posting it to Xitter in real-time.
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Haven’t owned every pixel (typically keep phones for ~3 years), but I’ve had nothing but Google phones since the OG nexus line. Just purchased my first iPhone ever to replace my much battered Pixel 6.
Operation Get Off Google continues apace.
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The "killer app" to get me on board with AI would be something like what Google is doing, but this still seems to fall short.
What I need an AI to do is to not just summarize my email, but to create related calendar and to-do list entries based on that email. I want to give it an email and have it not just tell me "Bob wants to meet on Friday about the TPS report." I want it to do is say something like: "Would you like to make a calendar event for a meeting with Bob on Friday and add the TPS report to your to-do list?"
What I need an AI to do is to not just summarize my email, but to create related calendar and to-do list entries based on that email. I want to give it an email and have it not just tell me "Bob wants to meet on Friday about the TPS report." I want it to do is say something like: "Would you like to make a calendar event for a meeting with Bob on Friday and add the TPS report to your to-do list?"
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Gloog's never been competent at doing things with their calendar beyond "add" and "short term lookahead", but it's persistently disappointing. I think back when you could command-line the assistant in Chrome it was more fully featured. For something so intensely searchy as calendar and mail, it's really weaksauce that you can't ask "when was my last blood pressure appointment?"
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This is a weird pixel to bow out of. By all accounts the hardware is excellent and has fixed all perceived problems of past generations.
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Yes, Gemini lost a bunch of integrations from Assistant. It cannot play a radio station on a Sonos, for example, or change the volume, which are things that Assistant can do. Because the present turned out to be stupid, Google Assistant was briefly a workaround for the terrible state of the Sonos app.
Gemini also has disappointing abilities to do stuff to the phone itself. I can't say "hey google switch the audio output to mono" — a workaround for Android bluetooth bugs — or "hey google check for system updates". It also doesn't listen for me to say "stop. Stop! STOP! SHUT UP GOOGLE" while it is speaking, even though the first-party alarm clock does respond to "stop" and "sleep" while it's going off.
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These are mild examples. Verge did extended testing, there does not seem to be any limitations.
Google’s AI tool helped us add disasters and corpses to our photos - The Verge
Google’s AI tool helped us add disasters and corpses to our photos - The Verge
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It feels like we're being fed AI with a shovel and I really question how many people actually want this crap? Maybe I'm the weirdo, but I sure as hell don't. And it's certainly not enough to make up for all the privacy issues I now have with Google products.
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So let me get this straight... Google wants me to buy a phone - a phone - for over a grand, and then wants me to keep on paying them an extra $240 a year just to use all of its features?
LOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!!!!
No.
LOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!!!!
No.
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Gemini is fairly similar to Gemini-pro so the pro subscription 'running out' isn't a big deal. Gemini isn't as smart and no image generation, and handles smaller context, but otherwise quite similar.
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Given its current abilities, I think Google is smoking crack if they think people will pay $240 annually
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Is it worth noting that newer Pixels support the nascent "Desktop Mode" that - coupled with a portable display, keyboard, and pointing device - may actually allow a phone to replace a laptop? That might help justify the $1000 cost and maybe even the subscription. Let's guess that the Gemini models will only improve by the time the bundled subscription term is over. So, too, will Desktop Mode. Cheap laptop-like devices that make it workable have started to emerge.
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As a 40+ year tech user, neither do I. I want PREDICTABLE / DETERMINISTIC output, not an amalgamation of the most common things other people did..
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Back in march my brother asked alexa hot to spell "hors d'oeuvers". the answer he got was "How to spell 'orders' o r d e r s". Asking google a few minutes later resulted in"hors d'oeuvers". It's also been pretty good as setting the destination in google maps when I've had to ask it to set the destination, and i'm driving. don't really like talking to ai though.
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Google Assistant on my nest hub has been doing a great job of this, even with non-English names.
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Today, while tweaking QOS on my router, I asked Gemini: "what's the meaning of 'bucket' in FQCodel". It gave me a good answer, then I asked, "how does this affect latency", another on-point answer.
I knew what value to configure without having to break my stride and go read manuals.
That's useful. Like, the reason I don't use mine more is purely out of habit ... Decades of searching the web, scouring blogs in hopes of finding that one person that actually understands what they're talking about... Tough habit to break. People without this baggage don't have such hangups.
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Yeah but all the voice-search tools have been doing that lo back unto crappy Siri and early Alexa. Searching the web is the least thing an integrated assistant should do.
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I've got a 6 Pro. Sounds like the hardware (and smaller size!) is good enough to justify upgrading to a 9 Pro, but count me in with the "AI is the new 3D"crowd.
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If Gemini worked 95% of the time throughout all of these and other people's tests, I'd give a shot in using it, considering it as a useful side feature. I definitely wouldn't pay for it.
It just sucks to have a feature that you can't trust. A feature that may work 100% only 30% of the time. With all of the things that it can't do, they really shouldn't even include it at all.
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No search engine in the past could do this. In the past, a search engine was literally an index. Today, the AI assistant is more like a professor. You just ask it what you want to know, and instead of telling you what text books to read, it reads those books and extracts the answer for you.
With the current state of the art, It goes without saying that you have to be mindful of the risks of hallucination and wrong information, but for a subject matter on which you're competent enough to recognise a bad answer, or in contexts where limited veracity is not an issue (such as me tweaking the QOS settings on my router), this is a time saving application that was not possible before.
I'm also on the free model, mainly subscription fatigue, and despite the potential, it's capabilities are not yet compelling enough for me to consider paying the amount Google (and others) are asking.
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So if you're going to review Google's latest bullshit, the FIRST question you need to address is "Can I turn the damn thing off?" I have yet to see the assistant that I didn't want to just get the fuck out of my way. Stop helping me. They don't know what I want so they're not good at it. All the do is slow me down and add frustration. I wandered into the web version of Gemini by accident recently. I was searching for restaurants while on a trip, looking for some reviews. I clicked on one of those links where Google slightly reformulates a question and ended up with . . . Star Trek? WTF?
If this bullshit can't be turned off, I am at the end of my Pixel buying. Google is doing everything they can think of to force me into an iPhone.
If this bullshit can't be turned off, I am at the end of my Pixel buying. Google is doing everything they can think of to force me into an iPhone.
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What about situations in which you are NOT competent enough to recognize a bad answer? What then? Do a second search?
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HuntingManatees
Ars Centurion
The one where they added drugs to the picture of a woman sitting on the floor pretty much sums up the current sophistication of image AI for me. It can generate a completely photorealistic picture of powder cocaine but doesn't understand that nobody would cut lines on a rug.
The effectiveness of disinformation with this kind of stuff really is going to come down to the user's precise attention to naturalistic detail in a composition, isn't it?
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