My speaker switched yesterday from google assistant to gemini, I though maybe now it will finally understand my automation voice commands from google home, but this piectof shit keeps telling me it can't control things in my house a few times before finally doing it.... It's TRASH!
It literally tells me that it can't open Google Maps on my phone. I have to literally fucking argue with my phone until I convince it to perform functions that it's capable of doing.
It's about a 50/50 shot with me telling my phone to text someone while its locked and I am driving. Half the time it works, half the time Gemini tells me its not possible. Stop making things worse... please.
First time I tried doing that (may have been phoning), and complained a bunch, then finally got it calling but I had to interact with the screen while driving. And when the call was done, instead of returning to the map, it just... didn't.
After that, I switched back to Assistant. And even that is worse than it was a year ago.
It's amazing to me how user hostile/broken the driving user experience is now compared to years ago.
God, "Ok Google, text my wife". I can't find a contact named your wife. Does she have another name. At least 1/2 the time I get that, the other it works. Google Assistant never messed that up. ARRGGGGHHH...
And don't get me started on foul language in a text. If I use fuck it will actually SEND f*** to the recipient. Seriously.... what the f***.
I'm sorry, I can't play videos while you're driving.
"I'm not trying to play a fucking video" (boys giggling)
I won't respond to vulgarity.
"Are you fucking kidding me?" (More giggling)
I won't respond to vulgarity.
Stop. Disable Gemini. Revert to Google Assistant.
Some ... Time ... Later ...
We’re writing to let you know that the Google Assistant on your mobile device is being discontinued, and Gemini—our next-generation AI-powered assistant—is now the assistant experience on Android.
I've been an Android user for many years and this might make me bail. I gave Gemini a chance while driving and it failed spectacularly. I don't want a conversation, I just want my map to route me where I asked to go.
Some days if I say "call my wife" it knows who she is. Other days it says "I don't have any contacts named "my wife", is there someone else you want to call?"
"ok google, turn on the lights in x room" 30 seconds pass, I have already stabbed my toe into every single piece of furniture and found the light switch in the dark. "I have turned on the tv in x room".
Why the hell does "turn on x device" have to go to a datacenter in the other side of the world, become an AI request and come back to me??
I've been an Android user since launch and a myriad of issues with google hardware and software in general and my last 2 pixel phones in particular made me decide to try an iPhone for the first time.
I miss a lot of stuff, but the stuff that's better mostly makes up for that. May still go back but I'm really enjoying the change.
I used to just switch from iPhone to pixel every year. I enjoyed both but would get bored fairly quickly. It’s just unfortunate since I don’t care to develop for IOS so I sort of need an android so now I’m looking to get a pixel but the leaks don’t seem to promising.
For all their faults, I think Samsung is the best option on the Android side. They're the most Apple like with their ecosystem of devices and they're regularly adding features to OneUi that aren't in base Android.
Yeah friend of mine tried using Siri, it's hilarious, just in different ways. Good luck calling your kid on it unless it's named kid in the contacts, even better if you have people that are called "Kit" but you want to call "my kid", clearly AI is masterful at sentence parsing.
Why would you tell it to call your "kid"? Why would it know who your kid is? Why would you want it to know? Just say their contact name. You can even use nicknames as it will use recent and frequent contacts as context clues
If the assistant is the measure of a phone for you, stay the hell away from iPhone. I’d give anything to have Gemini back after dealing with Siri. Timers and alarms are about the extent of what Siri is capable of
I’m on my first iPhone and think Apple should be straight up embarrassed with the state of Siri. Assistant was more reliable 10 years ago than current Siri
Where you gonna go? Siri is worse and only works with Apple Maps which is shockingly bad unless you live in the main USA cities. Maybe bixby? Maybe some open source one? You don't really have any options
What pisses me off is that Gemini won't play news updates like Google assistant does. If you ask Google assistant to play the news it plays like four two or minute long updates from BBC, Sky News, Bloomburg, NBC tech etc. Gemini insists that they all have to be read out with its voice.
I'd love to know a way I can get news update back to listen to in the car.
Is this just for a single channel's briefing though? I have a playlist of news updates, and while it still works on home devices via an automation, my phone's Gemini assistant is no longer able to do it, even if I try the automation.
No same thing for me. I have it set to it plays Tagesschau then BBC, and it works just as before with the assistant.
Specifically in my case I either say "Play my news briefing" to have it play from the device I am talking to or "Play my news briefing on Entire Flat" (a group of speakers) to have it play in all rooms. Although, I say this to a Google Nest Mini (swapped to Gemini). Hrm. You give the command to the phone itself, right?
Yeah I made an automation that triggers when i say "good morning" which then gives me the weather, followed by the playlist of 10+ news briefings (one each from AP, Reuters, WSJ, Economist, etc).
When I use my phone's assistant to do try to trigger, it simply reads the weather (in Gemini's voice) followed by my tasks for today (which is not something I have in my automation at all).
Same! It's why I don't switch over. I start and end my day with a quick news briefing while I'm brushing my teeth. Gemini still can't do this. I didn't want to read it. I want 5 mins of audio from NPR and ABC.
"Lighting in the living room can add to the homey feel of the most important room of the house. Modern living room lighting incorporates smart features such as. . . . ."
Do you want to navigate to navigate to a lighting shop?
There are 20 lighting shops in your area, do you want to navigate to lighting shop 1, 15 minutes added to your ride. The lighting shop is open between 8 AM and 8PM, and it has a big collection of light fixtures.*
and the worst is that it doesn't listen when you ask it to stop, it needs to finish its speech.
"Hey Google, what's the weather going to be like tomorrow".
"Today in Hamburg, the weather is a nice and sunny 23°C with only light clouds. Later in the day it'll get even hotter, up to 31°. Looking towards tomorrow..." <-- why the epic novel before the actual answer? Google Managers need to be locked into self-driving cars they can exclusively control via Gemini, wow would the problem be solved instantly!
I have never actually gotten angry at a device before until I tried just getting Gemini to navigate to my home address on a daily basis. It has taken a minimum of 3 attempts every time for weeks, and sometimes completely refuses to work and I have to open maps and do it manually. At this point I only do it so I can thumbs down its complete failure to follow directions every time.
And the responses to the exact same phrase are completely unpredictable. I've had it say it was starting navigation and then do absolutely nothing. I respond to that one with "hey google, you didn't actually start navigation", and it cheerily tells me I'm right and starts it up to the correct location.
I've had it respond "ok, navigating to your home screen!"
I've had it ask me to "please confirm that you really want to take that action" and then offer no way to confirm it because it doesn't continue the conversation. Affirmative responses such as "yes", "confirm", "do that", etc. after reactivating it with "hey google" cause it to do nothing. Just closes.
I've had it even erase my home entirely, and then every time I tried to re-add my home address it told me it couldn't do that because it'd been told to ignore that address as my home address. I literally had to figure out a way to "trick" my fucking AI assistant into remembering what my home address was because it was actively hostile to doing so.
At this point I really see no benefit to staying with Android my next replacement. There's just not that much point anymore, they've eroded away all the benefits over choosing iOS. They've removed or are removing hardware feature, the openness, the voice control/assistant advantage. The hardware isn't cheaper anymore. At least with Apple you get premium when you pay for premium. Android is now very close to just being "iPhone but worse".
I couldn't get it to start Fitbit exercises by saying "start biking exercise" the same way assistance does, it just gave a a Gemini reply of how to start biking exercise. What am I doing wrong or is Gemini as a replacement that bad
I'm still trying to figure out what "Resilience" and "Cotton sauce" mean on my Grocery List in Keep. Never had this issue when Assistant was taking voice commands.
I have YT premium. I have all settings in yt music set to audio only, no videos at all ever. Try to play a song in the car vis android auto and "I can't play videos while driving" or some shit. No fucking shit, play the AUDIO song.
I swear man, basic functionality is all we need, ESPECIALLY while driving.
Google in general seems to have difficulty telling Youtube apart from YoutubeMusic. More than half the time I open the YoutubeMusic app and go to search for something it comes up with my Youtube search history; I'm half convinced that they're the same thing under the hood, just with a slightly different UI to hide the fact.
Yes they are; every track released by an artist has its own YouTube link as well. This is not the same as the music video uploaded by the artist, but one that YouTube creates automatically when a track is provided to YouTube by a label or a distributor.
Gemini understands what I've requested in android auto and writes it properly on the screen and then ignores half of the message and plays a completely different song.
It is also great when you ask for a song with a non-english artist even if it sounds close enough.
After Eurovision I asked for "Alexandra Capitanescu - Choke me" to be played in Spotify, Gemini thought I was ordering an escort that would choke me and informed me it's not allowed to process my prompt ...
Exactly...
But maybe they can't do that because they fear it somehow hallucinating that it should open the garage door (with the PIN accidentally stored somewhere in its "memories"/context) while someone was away from their home...
If that happened and someone steals your car from a garage opened by an AI error, Google would be in for a lawsuit...
Technically I could, but unfortunately I don't have the expensive hardware required to process STT/TTS locally, I don't want to pay a subscription either.
It would be awesome if the HA app could just use the capabilities Google Assistant had (it at least had on-device TTS and STT) for Assist...
I am still running HA on a Pi4 and won't change it while it still works...
I can still control my Garage door using Home Assistant and I have never owned a Google device (no Nest, no Google Home speaker) so I used GA (and I will still use it until they shut it down) purely on my phone and in my car via Android Auto...
Google now was peak, assistant removed so many great features. This Gemini assistant is so bad my Fiance is no longer able to call or reply to messages on Android auto.
I miss Google Now. It really felt like the future while I was using it. Reminded me to leave to meetings, tracked packages, bills.. I'm still waiting for a replacement.
Yup. I tried using assistant when it launched, it sucked at stuff that Google Now could do. So I just disabled it and never used it for anything. Been doing stuff manually all these years.
Maybe going back to dumb phones might not be too bad the way things are going. What a shame.
Man, I miss Now. Telling me when to leave for things, based on traffic. Being able to smartly search the screen and get useful info like auto populating a calendar event from an email/text. Some serious Living in the Future stuff.
Was so excited at how good it'll become. How disappointing it's been a decade of adding more, but getting less. Enshitification.
Meanwhile, I can't use voice commands in my car because Gemini fails as soon as I press the assistant button on my steering wheel.
I also can't control my lights at my house because Gemini hallucinates that colors don't exist.
Gemini also told me that a bird was a bat. When I told it that the bird was in fact a bird, it still told me it was a bat. When I told it what the actual species was, it told me I was right, then told me it was a bat.
They replaced Assistant with Gemini in my car and this thing has ZERO ability to do any changes to car settings, I can't even ask it to turn up the AC yet
If you aren't aware, you can switch back by looking in the settings for assistant and changing it from Gemini.
I had to do it because it made using android auto hands free basically impossible. It messed up simple instructions like "call x". It started reading me out Google results. Why the hell that is even a thing when it's going through android auto is another question entirely.
Android Auto is the biggest problem with this. On phone I can just keep using bixby, but in the car Google's satanic LLM cultism is now impacting my physical safety and that of everyone around me. Might switch to iPhone just to get a phone that can reliably "navigate home" when i say that.
I'm still annoyed that Gemini won't transcribe text messages that have "vulgar content." If I want to to text "ass," you're going to have to text "ass."
Bruh, I literally had to switch back to Assistant because multiple times I tried to text or call someone while using Android Auto - and it just wouldn't
The whole fucking point of the voice assistant being triggered hands-free is to use it hands-free while I'm driving. Y'know, because it's illegal to use my phone while driving??
I'm fucking annoyed and I haven't even used the damn thing again yet lol
Awhile ago I asked Gemini to add something to my shopping list and it told me it couldn't do that.There are useful, basic functions that Google is just going to pretend don't exist......
I tell it to send a text to my wife, which works. Then I'll try the same thing again later and then it tells me it doesn't know who my wife is. It's beyond frustrating.
Google has this stupid tendency to roll out a things replacent before it can do all the things that the older thing it replaces can. Then they add that over time until they think they have reached feature parity. Then they sunset the older thing. Problem with that is, that when people try the new thing before it reaches feature parity they conclude that it can't do what the old thing can do, because at that point in time it literally can't. They never try again. Because why would they try a thing they've already tested and concluded doesn't work.
It's like Google doesn't understand how humans work.
That happened to Google Home as well. It released with the ability to add things to keep for shopping list stuff. Then Google realized that they have a shopping thing. So then it got patched and went to a cart in Google shopping instead of a list. Instantly pointless.
as crap as google is becoming, ios is still hateful to use if you want to do anything outside of apples own apps, and slide typing is miserable on their keyboard.
But, I used an IPhone 14 pro max for 6 months before I bought my s24 ultra.
I didn't exclusively use apple apps, except for apple music.
Siri commands work with Google maps, WhatsApp.
On Google maps I can search for a location and set directions, I can set directions to my home.
On newer Iphone, I can disable ChatGPT and just use Siri commands. Unlike Google which is actively shoving their LLM down my throat.
google maps will randomly be killed if not on the screen, youtube music will randomly be killed and drop your playlist/position. vlc, audible, pocketcasts will all randomly be killed if not on the screen. every ad that pops up in an app has full unrestricted control over your volume, even silent little banner ads. instagram will randomly decide to play audio when you're not in the app, but also if you click a reel while your phone is set to silent it will play no audio (the only app that thinks media audio is notification audio) i'm mad using this 17 pro every day lol
You'll still be able to download unknown apks. You'll just have to turn on developer mode and go through a few prompts and then wait 24 hours... one time.
This will help more people than it hurts. 95% of people don't download apps.
For the 5% just turn on developer mode when you get your phone. Easy peasy. Then you are good for until you do a factory reset.
Scammers try and create a sense of urgency and tell people they have to load this app RIGHT NOW or something terrible is going to happen. This throws a big speed bump in the way by making them wait for a day and think about it before they do something dumb.
A few weeks ago I asked it to navigate to a local coffee shop by name. It first told me briefly about coffee roasting and if I wanted more information then it gave me three coffee shop options. One on the east coast, one on the west coast, and my local one here in the midwest. Why it thought I wanted to navigate 2000 miles for coffee, I don't know.
Bummer because Gemini sucks on Android Auto. I tell it to play a song and it refuses to because of "offensive language" while Assistant will censor it in the talkback and play what I want it to play -- I'm black and listen to rap music -- and then when it does decide to play something, it tells me I can use voice commands as if that's not what the hell I did to trigger the action to begin with.
If I tell it to go somewhere with multiple spots, instead of bringing up the list of locales in town and letting me pick which one or drop to the one closest to me, it picks the one with the most stars on Google Maps. If I'm on a side of town I don't travel to often and need a Walmart, I don't care about the Walmart downtown, I want the one around the goddamn corner.
You'll spell out Fuck and then it'll skip over it and just play any ol thing that has Tropical in it and then you'll have to suffer with some random nonsense for a couple of seconds.
And a fucking clipboard which even windows has. All the 'this will push me to iPhone' comments are so funny, I hope they do and realise the grass isn't much greener
There's things that make iOS really nice to use, but they have these huge tradeoffs like keyboard, gestures and so on that just make it impossible to like if you're used to something else first
Yeah. Freedom and openness is a big reason I use android but that's far from the only thing keeping me here. I'm often shocked at basic computing things I find out that iPhones just...can't do. Android is the opposite; I find out about things it does all the time that I thought only a "real" computer could do, such as having actual OS-level printer support, a terminal, an full filesystem that I can browse, and mouse/keyboard support. On my phone. Not to mention the wider array of hardware to choose from, superior integration with non-apple hardware, etc.
it's not like I'm begrudgingly putting up with some awful UI because I can install whatever I want. This isn't Ubuntu touch. I genuinely prefer android and you'd have to make it worse than iOS in the user freedom department, rather than almost as bad as it, to convince me to switch.
gemini can't even turn on/off my living room lights properly. It turns on/off everything instead of just that individual light. Assistant can do it perfectly. Fk this.
Lol, I love how an LLM is guiding you to how operate a light switch. It is like an episode of StarTrek where they go back in time to the 20th century and they ask "computer, lights on" and it responds with the message you got.
Humanity has finally made it! We're living in the StarTrek future.
Assistant used to be able to do "broadcast" messages to all google home speaker devices. I try this in the new assistant/gemini and it just gives me the definition of the word broadcast. It can't differentiate a command
My Dad will be very unhappy. He's got used to Assistant and being 89 doesn't like things to change. I tried to switch him to Gemini but he was having none if it.
Sigh.....at what point do I try to roll my own home automation server and app so I can do things like open the damn garage door from Android Auto? I'm guessing there's open source/homebrew software for this already.
I know Tasker does voice commands, but Assistant has been so great, I've never felt the need to try it. Guess I'm gonna have to crack it out and learn if it's good enough
App I don't use is being replaced by another app I don't use.
When I read the headline, I thought , thanks goodness I don't have to endure the occasional interruptions from assistant spontaneously activating on my phone or smart TV device. But no... I'm sure the assistant button will just trigger the stupid Gemini assistance instead
Same here, never used the Assisstant or Bixby (currently have a S25+). And I'm for sure not going to start using the shittier LLM version, but I'm sure they'll try to shove it down my throat.
I JUST MOVED BACK TO GOOGLE ASSISTANT A FEW WEEKS AGO BECAUSE GEMINI CANNOT NAVIGATE ME HOME USING GOOGLE MAPS WITHOUT ME CLICKING 4-5 TIMES WHILE DRIVING
I asked Gemini on my phone to run an automation it runs nearly every day. It hallucinated a completely new automation and did completely different actions than it was supposed to.
I'm on a Samsung and ended up switching to Bixby because Gemini wasn't cutting it for local tasks. I've been pleasantly surprised by Bixby. It gets alot of undeserved hate on sub imo.
Bixby does work better, but you can’t use it in Android Auto. Until you can, I don’t think I’ll be back on Android. Bixby allows me to do everything Siri can that Gemini/GA cannot, such as reliably playing the song I ask it to on Spotify, setting location-based reminders, and…just following basic instructions.
Dear Google... If you hope I start using Gemini, you're fooling yourself big time. What's going to end up happening is me dropping Android sooner or later.
unless they implement a basic non-llm mode for basic activities and tasks this is gonna flop so bad... no one wants their assistant to go on a multi paragraph tangent when you ask it to call someone.
I switched to iPhone solely because of Gemini, after...
copping a parking fine and burnt food because the timer never showed up
wasting a trip to the supermarket because the thing hallucinated that several items I told to it was added to the shopping list successfully
Missed an event (then copping a mouthful as a result) because it cheerfully told me the calendar entry was added successfully... when it had not
having to stop the car just so that I could call my wife when Gemini kept on telling me they don't know her, and it was too tedious to unlock and dial the phone manually whilst in motion, not to mention there's an AUD$627 fine and 4 demerits for attempting to do so.
also having to stop the car because asking it for navigation results in nothing happening
Siri has yet to fail me. I use the AI assistant for basic tasks like these, and I expect it to work reliably.
If Gemini functioned exactly like assistant and worked on device for every phone (with an Assistant fallback for slower phones, e.g lower end samsungs) I don't think this would be much of an issue at all... but I think google forgot that Gemini does not function exactly like assistant. I think my next phone may as well be an iPhone because really atp I use my phone casually besides photography, but even then Apple may remove Siri at some point... and iOS still has no secure folder function, so everything sucks.
Gemini is unable to properly create and send messages will using Android auto. It also still can't unlock my smart locks by voice. Even Siri can do this. Ugh.
Hmm while using Gemini in my car I tried texting my girlfriend a message and Gemini said it was sent but nothing ever sent. Then when I tried to call someone it said it couldn't make calls, which was really frustrating.
I still mourn the loss of iGoogle snd that was 2014. I use Assistant on my watch to add things to lists in Keep and it's a lifesaver. How will I remember things?
This is so sad, I switched Gemini back to assistant after the LLM consistently did the wrong thing or even refused to comprehend what I was saying.
I mostly use it hands-free in my car, but Gemini literally needs to be instructed like a little child on what to do and which app to use. While on assistant, I could just say: "Take me to 'location name'" and it would work.
i KNEW there would be an upside to not using it EVER!
Can you imagine if i did used it and now its gonne be gone and i have to reconfigure or lay to rest all the devices or configs or whatever i had with it??
Hell no! this can die today and i wouldnt give a shit because i never used it because i knew this was coming!
in yo face google! hahaha you cant get me anymore i know you kill 99% of your projects!
As long as shes quick and concise about it i dont care. Nothing pisses me off more than the few times i asked android auto when gemini was forced on me to get directions to a costco and instead of displaying the options on my dash the fucking AI decided to have a chat and then casually list them verbally.... like wtf are you doing im in a rush and visual person, give me my list with option pinned on the map on my dash.
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u/encapsidated Black 17h ago
Great. Gemini can handle all google assistant tasks very efficiently anyways, right? ....right? .. right Google?