Wow that is pretty damning. I hope Google is adding all this stuff in with the replacement of Assistant but it’s Google so I guess they won’t. I replaced Assistant with Gemini a while back but I only use it for super basic stuff like setting timers so I didn’t realise it was this bad.
They did the same shit with Google Now, rolled it into Assistant but it was nowhere near as useful imo. Now we get yet another downgrade switching Assistant with Gemini.
As I like to say, there’s nobody Google hates more than the people that love and use their products.
That brief moment in time when we had dirt cheap Nexus phones, Google Now and Inbox was peak Google. Just 5 years later it was all gone.
Such great products. Now we get…image generation, inpainting and a conversational AI. All technically impressive, but those older products were actually functional and solved everyday problems.
I remember using my My Moto X in 2013 and finding Google services actually useful
Yup, Google Now was actually useful and helpful, so of course they had to get rid of it.
When google asked if I wanted to try Gemini I gave it a try and the first time I asked it to navigate home, something I use assistant for almost daily, it said it can’t access this feature but we can chat about navigating home instead - fuck that!
Even though I switched back to assistant it’s still getting dumber and losing functionality - yesterday is asked it to add something to my grocery list(in keep) and it put it on the wrong list, told me the list I wanted doesn’t exist, then asked if I wanted to create the list and then told me it can’t create it because it already exists.
I’ve talk to more logical toddlers!
Go go enshittification!
If you have a Pixel, just put GrapheneOS on it and you won’t ever have to deal with Google’s proprietary bullshit again
Do bank apps work ok on GrapheneOS?
You can use this list to check if you’re bank’s app is compatible
Huh, not only do my credit card apps work but both my bank apps do to. This has come a long way since I last checked.
I can also just use stock android and assume they work. Sometimes y’all miss the forest for the trees.
And deal with all the bloatware, all the proprietary nonsense that sends your data to Google who then sell it to like a million other companies and give it to the government whenever they ask for it
Nope. I just do my banking stuff on my computer instead.
You might have some luck if you use Google Play services, but they often check if you have a custom ROM and bail if you do.
I wouldn’t give such a general statement. It really depends on your bank. There’s a very handy list at https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compatibility-with-grapheneos/
Fair. I thought about linking that, but so many of them either require Google Play services, at least in the US, which kind of kills half the point of using GrapheneOS in the first place.
If you’re fine with sandboxed Google Play, then yeah, there’s a chance. If you’re not (e.g. you install via Aurora), then it’s incredibly unlikely your bank will work. Looks like US Bank works w/o it though?
which kind of kills half the point of using GrapheneOS in the first place
Absolutely not. Google Play services are much less invasive on GrapheneOS compared to other ROMs or the stock OS, since they run in the normal Android app sandbox, just like any other app you install. You can control all permissions, and uninstall them at any time. They do not get any special privileges, as it would be the case when running stock Android. You can also confine Play services in a separate user profile or in a work profile through an app like Shelter (user profiles offer better isolation).
If you’re not (e.g. you install via Aurora), then it’s incredibly unlikely your bank will work.
As I said, it highly depends on your specific bank. My bank in Germany works totally fine on GrapheneOS without Play Services. YMMV. That’s why I linked to that list.
It is SO shit! I can’t even turn off a light while talking to it through my earbuds! It just forces me to take my phone out and unlock it.
The best part is if you have Google Home/Nest products throughout your house and initiate a voice request you now have your phone using Gemini to answer and have the nearest speaker or display using Assistant to answer and they frequently hear eachother and take that as further input (having a stupid “conversation” with eachother). With Assistant as the default on a phone, the system knows what individual device it should reply to via proximity detection and you get a sane outcome. This happened at a friend’s house while I was visiting and they were frustrated until I had them switch their phone’s default voice assistant back to Assistant and set up a home screen shortcut to the web app version of Gemini in lieu of using the native Gemini app (because the native app doesn’t work unless you agree to set Gemini as the default and disable Assistant).
Missing features aside, the whole experience would feel way less schizophrenic if they only allowed you to enable Gemini on your phone if it also enabled it on each smart device in the household ecosystem via Home. Google (via what they tell journalists writing articles on the subject) acts like it’s a processing power issue with existing Home/Nest devices and the implication until very recently was that new hardware would need to roll out - that’s BS given that very little of Gemini’s functionality is being processed on device and that they’ve now said they’ll begin retroactively rolling out a beta of Gemini to older hardware in fall/winter. Google simply hasn’t felt like taking the time to write and push a code update to existing Home/Nest devices for a more cohesive experience.
Just today I noticed that my Google Home (I believe gen 2) has a new voice.
They should have just merged the two products. Instead of coming up with Gemini, they could have added LLM features to the Assistant. On a Samsung phone, you now have Bixby, Assistant and Gemini lol.
very good, hopefully that lets more people realise that you don’t need LLM garbage being slapped onto everything under the sun
Sorry we’ve invested hundreds of billions of dollars. LLM in everything.
Doorbells? LLM.
Streaming service? LLM.
Cheese sandwich? Believe it or not - straight to LLM.
I’m still trying to figure out why the new Chromecast needs AI.
It’s time to start calling it something else. Google is dead.
Was it ever truly alive? Yes. For one magical summer.
It’s the normal corporate lifecycle. Founders build it up. Workers expand it. Suits take over to monetize everything. A private equity firms squeezes the last life out of it.
But the Nexus 4 was released in the fall?
Why does google feel like they’re playing squid games inside the company? Just with AI overlords besides the rich psychopaths.
I can’t set a reminder. It was all I used the damn thing for before.
Google set a reminder
Nope now it won’t Whats the point ugh
I tried it out for a while and yes, it really is as bad as the article implies. I gave it a fair chance for a few weeks and then went back to the old assistant (a task which which gemini was also completely unable to help me with, at one point even gaslighting me and saying I wasn’t using Gemini).
It’s kind of crazy to think about but it seems like Google is just somehow really terrible at AI
More and more you all prove to me that you don’t actually use the products.
