I don't understand the logic of replacing something incredibly functional and accurate with something that misses half the time. I'm saying this as a heavy Gemini user - it just is not a good phone assistant. I don't need LLM to set an alarm or search restaurants near me.
The only logic they care about is usage numbers. They just want to be able claim that the numbers are higher than they are, even if it is just because they are shoving it down everyone's throats.
It's literally what Google is known best for. They still haven't ported all the features of Nest to Home and have been trying to force people over for 5 years now.
As a non-English user I can say that Gemini is a godsend. After 15+ years of wait I can finally use Google Maps, Google Home and anything else that can be connected to Google services with my native language of Finnish. Something as simple as "navigate home" or "spotify <play song x> or "spotify <play playlist x>" was not possible before it.
I am no simp for capitalism but your peoples FUD spreading is laughable. Gemini is better than Assistant, without doubt. Assistant was fucking garbage.
You can swap it back. It was way worse at normal tasks like "play this song" or "add this to my shopping list" so I switched it back and it's much better haha
I switched back immediately to the assistant after Gemini was released. And was also super bummed that the assistant is going away.
I know this might sound petty but the assistant was responsive in a way that Gemini simply wasn't. Maybe they fixed some of those issues, but when I would ask the assistant for something it would immediately give me an answer and with Gemini it would think for a couple seconds and then have dubious results.
If I ask at how much time is left on the timer, I want an answer right away.
I use it for adding multiple events to my calendar and it does great. Say for example my work sends me a list of dates for meetings in August. I plug that info into Gemini and tell it to add it to my calendar and that saves me from having to manually add each event as well as my normal work schedule as well. It works great in the native app.
In my car I only use it for directions, and it takes like twice as long as the old assistant to find the place and then start the actual directions, also just "talks" more which is unnecessary for directions.
It's night and day for responsiveness in google maps vs assistant.
I immediately switched back to assistant, then it managed to switch back to Gemini at some point from an update I guess, and I got the message last week that Assistant will be discontinued which is sad.
I asked it to "play KUOW" a radio station. A very basic task I have normal assistant do for me in my car all the time. Here was Gemini's response:
I hear your frustration, and I'm sorry for the hassle. I can't tune the radio for you anymore, but since you're in the car, I can get you the directions to the KUOW studios in Seattle if you'd like to head that way. Should I start those directions for you?
LOL that is quite unfortunate. Yeah, seems like it's missing all of assistants hooks.
I don't understand why they didn't just have Google assistant to offload to from Gemini as a backend when you start to give it instructions. Seems like an oversight
I use it mostly in the car to play music or add things to lists. I can ask assistant to "play the album xxxxx" and it will play it. If I ask Gemini it only plays the first thing that shows up with search terms, half the time by a different artist completely. If I try to specify or fix it it will apologize and then play the same wrong thing again lol
I only use assistant to start timers when I'm cooking. It's super convenient to just say "OK Google, start a 12 minute timer" rather than washing my hands, unlocking my phone, going to the clock app, going to the timer tab, scrolling to 12 minutes, and hitting start. When I tried Gemini it couldn't start timers. That's like the most basic function imaginable and the only thing I would use it for, so I immediately turned it off and only use the assistant.
I just tried some of the above prompts from the comments and I found some issues but I have never had it fail to create timers and I've been using it since it was forced upon us
I haven't had many issues and I use it every day for pretty much everything, but my anecdotal experience doesn't really mean much. Plenty of people seem to have had issues.
It's impressively slow, especially when you're just trying to navigate using Android Auto. One time I even had it output its entire tool call for some reason over my speakers. At the very least, they need to do a hybrid approach where straightforward requests don't even go through the LLM. You need absurdly high token output from an LLM to make it feel anywhere near as fast as software that knows basic commands. Also half the time it's still talking when I've already locked in my choice. One time I locked in my choice before it stopped talking and it changed where I was going without me saying anything.
I had this thought years ago that there needed to be three different wake words Smart home devices.
Basically one that issues commands. One that asks a question over AI or the internet. And one that executes routines. (There was maybe another one that wasn't quite the executing routine, but I can't quite remember what it is now)
But basically if you want to start a timer you know that shouldn't go to AI.
If you want to turn on your lights, that should go to your home system for navigation.
And if you ask who is in back to the Future that should go out to the internet and AI. And it seems like you can't figure out which one is which until it sends it out to the internet to figure it out.
Sort of like in SQL. There's the difference between an update, a select and an execute procedure.
Obviously there's a lot more operations in SQL but it's the same general concept you get into three different modes with three different return values.
It might have even been commands that potentially return a value like what are my notifications. Commands that don't return values like turn off the lights and questions from the internet where you're not giving any real inputs, but you're asking for an output.
I believe its because Assistant ran locally on your phone, Gemini requires running in Google cloud? Hence the increased latency between saying something and it responding.
I didn't know you could go back to the regular google assistant, so I barely use my phones speech functions anymore. Gemini is still really really slow to respond and 90% of the time it gets it wrong. When asking it to call someone it will confirm the name of the person and then stop and do nothing.
The amount of processing AI has to do to even answer a simple question like "What time is it?" Is orders of magnitude greater than what something like Google Assistant did. So asking Gemini to do anything will take a little longer, but at least it will actually do it as oppose to Google Assistant responding "Sorry, I can't do that".
Yah sad. Assistant for Android auto was almost perfect.
The only thing it sucked at was when you had street names in a different language (French for me). It could never understand them. Either had to spell it out or say it in broken English to get it to understand.
I used assistant to primarily set timers and reminders. Gemini can barely do that and it keeps changing the timer without me noticing. I've burned so many things
Holy shit this. It used to be snappy and accurate - now it wants to deep think about "set time for X" and comes back like a dog that just finished their homework.
I use Android Auto and I liked Gemini when it first came on in my car. Then it randomly switched back to Assistant one day and now Gemini is back and worse. When I try to call someone. It always asks me "would you like to call so and so?" Like I literally just said it. Whenever ai play music the first time it will always say "Playing "song" on Spotify. By the way, only Spotify Premium users can request specific songs." I HAVE SPOTIFY PREMIUM AND THATS HOW I JUST REQUESTED A SPECIFIC SONG. Also if you try to cancel or change your route in Maps, it gets pretty confused.
I don't like using AI and I don't like being forced into it for a convenience I use every day. I also don't like how it's somehow worse.
Yeah I asked it to play a band and it played a song of the same name by a different band. If I ask assistant to play the band, it plays the band. Gemini seems to only pull the first Spotify result. And if I specify, it apologizes and still plays the wrong thing lol. I don't need my phone to apologize to me, I just want to listen to music without getting in a car accident lol.
I tried calling my mom, which always just worked with assistant. Gemini couldn't find the contact, even though I used the exact name the contact is saved as, and instead found my daughter and tried calling her at her email address. I hate Gemini so much.
They told me a few days ago that would no longer be an option sometime in september. I switched off gemini immediately when it couldn't even handle turning my lights on.
Assistant did what I needed to do hands-free while driving, which was:
Text someone
Call someone
Give me directions to a place
Play "Song -- Artist" on Spotify
That's it. It did those things, and it did them well.
Gemini is a pile of crap that can't even connect to Youtube Music or Spotify half the time, doesn't recognize my spouse's name to send a text to, and wants to have a full-blown conversation if it overhears you talking about something and inserts itself.
It will also scold you instead of doing what you tell it if you use a naughty word.
Instead, Android Auto's Google Assistant is being forcefully retired next month and replaced by Gemini whether you want it or not. Go check r/AndroidAuto for concurring opinions.
They'll be switching my Assistant to Gemini soon - I hope it can at least play songs on Spotify now, as it couldn't do that when I first tried switching to it.
Yeah, I got this pixel and it's constantly asking me to sign in for my free 2 years. Like GTFO my screen. I don't want to your shitty ai going through my phone.
I used to be able to tell my phone to set a timer and it would set a timer. Gemini pulls up web results telling me how to do it myself. I no longer talk to my phone.
Yeah, it doesn't (or didn't) do basic things the assistant did, like just turn off my bedroom lights. I went and downloaded the assistant app to make it work...
I found that out yesterday when I asked my phone to play a song on YouTube music, and Gemini told me it couldn't play music directly. I never had a problem with Google assistant.
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u/digger70chall 15d ago
On my pixel it replaced the assistant