Gemini Nano: Your Phone’s New AI Sidekick

Over the past few years, Google has marketed its Pixel phones as the top choice for AI-powered features. However, the rise of AI tools like ChatGPT has prompted other smartphone makers to step up their game. Apple’s latest move, introducing Apple Intelligence on the iPhone 16 series, poses a fresh challenge to Google’s leadership in AI. Still, Google has a major advantage: the sheer scale of the Android ecosystem. It’s no surprise, then, that Google’s Gemini Nano AI model is now appearing on a growing number of devices, including those from Samsung and Xiaomi.

So what does Gemini Nano achieve on Android and should your next smartphone support it? Here’s everything you need to know.

What is Gemini Nano and why does it matter?

Gemini Nano is Google’s smallest AI model, designed to run directly on smartphones like the Pixel 9 series. It’s a specialized language model, great for tasks like suggesting chat replies, drafting messages, and more. Recently, Gemini Nano became multimodal, meaning it can also understand images and audio. However, it’s not as powerful as full-scale models like ChatGPT or Google’s own Gemini chatbot app. You won’t be able to have direct conversations with Gemini Nano like you would with those.

The big advantage of Gemini Nano is that it works entirely on your device, so it doesn’t need to send data to Google’s servers for processing. In fact, it even works offline, making it faster and more private compared to AI tools that rely on the internet and collect user data for future training.

Gemini Nano runs in the background, allowing your phone to process AI tasks without a connection.

Gemini Nano is designed to work efficiently on mobile devices, but it still uses some memory since it runs in the background. That’s why the Pixel 9 series comes with 16GB of RAM—part of it is dedicated to handling AI models like Gemini Nano. Modern processors, like the Tensor G4 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, also come with neural processing units (NPUs) to handle these AI tasks more efficiently.

Now that Gemini Nano is available on devices beyond the Pixel lineup, Google aims to integrate AI deeply into the Android experience. However, due to the higher processing power needed, this feature may be limited to premium smartphones. You can check the list of devices that support Gemini Nano below.

Gemini Nano features: What do you get?

The features of the Gemini Nano can vary depending on your device, but here’s a quick overview of what it can do. While many of these features are beginning to show up in other devices, you’ll likely need a newer phone with strong hardware to fully support the Gemini Nano.

1. Gboard Smart Reply

The Pixel Recorder app uses the Gemini Nano AI to generate summaries of audio recordings. On the Pixel 8 series, this feature was limited to summarizing about 15 minutes of audio. But with the latest Pixel 9 series, Google has upgraded the model, allowing it to summarize recordings that are over 30 minutes long.

Samsung’s Galaxy AI suite offers a similar feature in its Voice Recorder app, but it uses the more powerful Gemini Pro model, which runs in the cloud. This allows Samsung to handle recordings that last for hours, though it comes at the cost of privacy and speed.

3. Magic Compose

Magic Compose is a feature in the Google Messages app that leverages Gemini Nano to suggest replies by analyzing the last 20 messages in a conversation. You can choose from different writing styles—like Formal, Excited, Chill, and even Shakespearean—giving you the flexibility to tailor the tone of the AI-generated responses.

4. Pixel Screenshots

With the release of the Pixel 9 series, Google introduced the Pixel Screenshots app, which uses Gemini Nano AI to pull out and highlight key information from your old screenshots. Instead of endlessly scrolling through a chaotic gallery, you can simply type what you’re looking for—like a recipe you saved or an address from a chat—in the app’s search bar. The best part? Since all the AI processing happens right on your device, it delivers lightning-fast results, even if your gallery is packed with thousands of screenshots.

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5. TalkBack

Android’s accessibility feature, TalkBack, is becoming more powerful with the integration of Gemini Nano’s multimodal capabilities. This update offers richer and more detailed image descriptions, helping users who are blind or have low vision to better understand what’s displayed on their screen.

In contrast to the previous version of TalkBack, which only provided basic descriptions, Gemini Nano can now recognize specific landmarks and finer details. It’s like a reverse AI image generator, giving descriptions as precise as “A panoramic view of the Sydney Opera House at night.

6. Pixel Weather AI reports

Google’s new Pixel Weather app brings AI integration to your weather updates. Before the Pixel 9, tapping the weather forecast would take you to the Google app. Now, the Pixel Weather app delivers more detailed information, improved widgets, a sleeker interface, and Gemini Nano support.

You might wonder why an on-device AI is needed for weather updates. The idea is that Gemini Nano provides a brief summary of the upcoming weather right at the top of the app, so you don’t have to sift through all the details like temperature or precipitation. It also factors in things like UV index and air quality, offering you a quick, comprehensive snapshot.

7. Call Notes

Call Notes is a new feature exclusive to the Pixel 9 series. It allows you to record phone calls and uses Gemini Nano to create a summary of the conversation afterward. However, you have to turn this feature on manually for each call you want to record and summarize. During the call, the other person will hear a notification saying, “Google Call Notes is on. The call is recorded.” A similar capability is available with Galaxy AI, which processes recordings offline.

Which phones support Gemini Nano?

Gemini Nano originally launched exclusively on the Pixel 8 Pro but has gradually expanded to a wider range of devices, including some from other brands. Here’s a look at the devices now supporting Gemini Nano:

• Google Pixel 9 series, including the Pixel 9 Pro Fold
• Google Pixel 8a
• Google Pixel 8 series
• Samsung Galaxy S24 series
• Samsung Galaxy S24 FE
• Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 and Fold 6
• Xiaomi 14T series (support announced)
• Xiaomi MIX Flip (support announced)
• Motorola Edge 50 Ultra
• Motorola Razr 50 Ultra

As we look ahead, it’s likely that future premium smartphones will also include Gemini Nano support. This is especially relevant since regular apps will soon be able to leverage this AI model. Google has simplified the process of downloading and updating the Gemini Nano model through AICore, which also offers an interface for third-party developers. In early 2024, Google provided early access previews to companies like Adobe and Grammarly, allowing them to integrate the on-device model into their applications. For example, this could enable Adobe Acrobat to generate AI-driven summaries of PDFs without needing an internet connection.