What is Gemini Nano? Features and supported phones description

For years, Google has positioned its Pixel smartphones as the go-to choice for AI capabilities. However, the recent boom in AI tools like ChatGPT has encouraged other smartphone brands to follow suit. The recent release of Apple Intelligence on the iPhone 16 series will further threaten Google’s ambitions to lead in the AI ​​space. However, with the entire Android ecosystem at its disposal, the search giant still has a numerical advantage. Unsurprisingly, Google’s Gemini Nano AI model is starting to be used in more and more devices, including phones from Samsung and Xiaomi.

So what does Gemini Nano do for Android? And should your next smartphone support it? Here’s everything you need to know.

What is Gemini Nano? Why is it important?

Gemini Nano is Google’s smallest AI model specifically designed to run directly on smartphones like the Pixel 9 series. Specifically, it’s a large-scale language model that excels at text-based tasks and can suggest replies to chat conversations, draft messages, and more. The recent Gemini Nano release is also multimodal. This means it can understand images and sounds. However, it also lacks the functionality of a full language model. It cannot communicate directly with Gemini Nano like ChatGPT or the standalone Gemini app. The latter is Google’s AI chatbot that can be accessed from any device.

The advantage of Gemini Nano is that it runs on your device. This means that no data is sent to Google’s servers for processing. In fact, Gemini Nano works offline even without an active internet connection. Most online AI platforms use your data to train future models, which reduces response time and improves privacy.

Although Gemini Nano is specifically optimized for mobile hardware, it still consumes some memory since it has to run in the background. This is why the Pixel 9 series ships with 16GB of RAM. A significant portion is reserved for AI models such as Gemini Nano. Modern chipsets like Tensor G4 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 also include neural processing units (NPUs) to run these AI models efficiently.

With support for Gemini Nano extended beyond the Pixel lineup, Google’s goal is to make AI capabilities a core part of the Android experience. However, given the relatively high processing requirements, this model is likely to be supported only on premium phones. A complete list of devices that support Gemini Nano can be found below.

Gemini Nano features: What do you get?

The list of Gemini Nano features varies depending on the device, but here’s a quick summary of what this model can do. More and more features are starting to arrive on other devices, but you’ll likely need a modern phone with powerful enough hardware to see support for Gemini Nano.

Smartphone keyboards have been offering next-word suggestions for more than a decade, but Google has added experimental Gemini Nano support to Gboard for “smart replies” with “conversation recognition” . Simply put, the keyboard now uses AI to suggest replies based on the text in your chat. This feature works within WhatsApp, Line, and KakaoTalk, but is currently limited to US English.

The Pixel Recorder app leverages Gemini Nano to provide an overview of AI-generated audio recordings. On the Pixel 8 series, this model could only summarize about 15 minutes of audio. However, Google’s latest Pixel 9 series includes a new version of the model that allows summarization of recordings longer than 30 minutes.

The Galaxy AI Suite also includes a similar AI summarization feature in Samsung’s Voice Recorder app. However, it relies on Google’s larger Gemini Pro model, which can only run in the cloud. The advantage is that Samsung’s competing features can handle several hours of recording at the cost of privacy and speed.

Magic Compose is a feature within the Google Messages app that uses Gemini Nano to generate suggested replies based on the last 20 messages in a conversation. A variety of writing styles are available, including formal, excited, chill, and even Shakespearean, allowing you to adjust the tone of your AI-generated responses.

The Pixel Screenshots app, introduced with the Pixel 9 series, uses Gemini Nano to extract and identify important information from past screenshots. The app features a search bar, so instead of scrolling through an unorganized list of screenshots, you can ask for specific details like a saved recipe or an address from a friend’s chat in plain English. Masu.

All AI processing happens offline, so you’ll get near-instant results even if you have thousands of screenshots in your gallery.

5.Talkback

TalkBack, Android’s accessibility feature, is powered by Gemini Nano’s multimodal capabilities. It provides rich and detailed descriptions of images, allowing visually impaired users to understand what is displayed on the screen.

Unlike older models of TalkBack, which only provided brief descriptions, Gemini Nano can identify specific landmarks and details. It can be thought of as a reverse AI image generator and can provide useful results such as “a panoramic view of the Sydney Opera House at night.”

As you might guess from the name, this is an AI integration within Google’s dedicated weather app. Before the Pixel 9 was released, tapping on the weather forecast brought up the Google app. However, the Pixel Weather app offers more data, better widgets, a smoother UI, and support for Gemini Nano.

Why do you need on-device AI to know the weather? The idea is that Gemini Nano generates a short summary of the upcoming weather at the top of the app, allowing you to read expected precipitation, temperature, and other forecast numbers. It’s about saving time. It can also take into account additional factors such as UV Index and Air Quality Index, giving you comprehensive information at a glance.

Call notes is another Pixel-exclusive feature that debuted at the same time as the Pixel 9 series. This feature records calls and uses Gemini Nano to generate a summary of the conversation. However, you will need to manually enable this feature for each call you want to record and summarize. The other party will hear a voice message saying, “Google Call Notes is turned on.” The call is being recorded. ” Galaxy AI also offers similar functionality and processes recordings offline.

Gemini Nano debuted exclusively on the Pixel 8 Pro, but gradually made its way to more devices, including non-Google devices. Here is a list of devices that support Gemini Nano:

We expect future premium smartphones to include support for Gemini Nano, especially since regular apps on phones will soon be able to take advantage of AI models. Google streamlines the download and update process for Gemini Nano models through AICore, and also provides an interface for third-party developers. Google announced in early 2024 that it was offering early access previews to companies like Adobe and Grammarly to embed on-device models within their apps. This potentially allows you to generate AI summaries without an internet connection in a PDF reader such as Adobe Acrobat.