In the event you imagine Google’s advertising hype, AI in a cellphone is de facto, actually vital, the perfect AI is Google’s, and the perfect place to get that AI is Google’s flagship smartphone, the Pixel 8. We’re 5 months faraway from the launch of the Pixel 8, and that does not appear to be a justifiable place anymore: Google says its newest AI fashions cannot run on the Pixel 8.
Google dropped that information in a Cellular World Congress wrap-up video that was noticed by Mishaal Rahman. On the finish of the present in a Q&A session, Googler Terence Zhang, a member of the Gemini-on-Android staff, stated “[Gemini] Nano is not going to be coming to the Pixel 8 due to some {hardware} limitations. It is at present on the Pixel 8 Professional and really just lately accessible on the Samsung S24 household. It’s going to be coming to extra high-end gadgets within the close to future.”
That may be a wild assertion. Gemini is Google’s newest AI mannequin, and it made an enormous deal of the launch final month. Gemini is available in just a few completely different sizes, and the smallest “Nano” dimension is particularly designed to run on smartphones as a much-hyped “on-device AI.” The Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Professional are Google’s flagship smartphones. Google designed the cellphone and the chip and the AI mannequin and one way or the other cannot make this stuff play good collectively?
Including to the weirdness is that Gemini Nano can run on the Pixel 8 Professional however not the smaller Pixel 8 because of “{hardware} limitations.” What limitations would these be, precisely? The 2 telephones have the very same Google Tensor SoC. They run the identical software program. The primary variations between the 2 telephones are display dimension (6.7 inches versus 6.2), battery dimension, a distinct digital camera loadout, and 8GB of RAM versus 12GB. RAM is the one recognized distinction you possibly can level to that would create a processing limitation, however Gemini Nano additionally runs on the Galaxy S24 sequence, the place the bottom mannequin has 8GB of RAM. RAM being the problem would imply Samsung telephones are one way or the other extra RAM environment friendly than Pixel telephones, which is difficult to imagine. If the Pixel 8 Professional Tensor 3 and Pixel 8 Tensor 3 are completely different one way or the other, that is not on the spec sheet.
5 months in the past on the Pixel 8 launch occasion, Google painted a very different picture of the Pixel 8 sequence: “I am excited to introduce you to the subsequent evolution of AI in your hand, Google Pixel 8 Professional and Google Pixel 8. Our newest telephones deliver collectively so many applied sciences from throughout Google. They’re the primary telephones to make use of our newest Google Tensor chip. They embody the easiest Android expertise, first-of-its-kind digital camera experiences, and the most recent AI developments from Google.” Each gadgets characteristic the customized Google Tensor 3 SoC that Google claimed was “designed particularly to deliver Google’s AI breakthroughs on to Pixel customers and present the world what’s attainable.” This tradition Google AI-focused design was speculated to ship “unbelievably useful experiences that no different cellphone can.”
Once you launch two telephones directly, it is all the time laborious to tell apart what the precise variations between the 2 fashions are. Generally, the gadgets get talked about within the plural, whereas different occasions “Pixel 8” is used to symbolize each gadgets. Generally, the dearer system is singularly talked about for no purpose aside from it is the dearer flagship. Between the hour-long presentation and personal press pre-briefing that Ars was part of, “What is the distinction” turned a fairly well-worn query that was anticipated to be answered clearly. Often, the go-to delineator right here is the spec sheet, which is predicted to spell out in clear language what you are really shopping for. The Google Retailer has a compare page the place you possibly can straight pit the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Professional towards one another, and nothing spells out a distinction in AI processing capabilities or a distinction within the Tensor chips.
Within the case of the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Professional, Google wasn’t clear sufficient in its communication at launch. Right this moment, although, re-watching the launch presentation with the brand new information that there is some dramatic distinction in AI processing capabilities, you possibly can choose up some language like discuss of the “Pixel 8 Professional’s on-device LLM” that you possibly can now interpret as a declaration of unique AI capabilities for the Professional mannequin, however that wasn’t clear on the time.
As a client, it is laborious to not really feel misled, and it is embarrassing for Google, however to virtually care about this, you’d have to know what the heck “Gemini Nano” really does and why it’s best to care about it. That is a tough query to reply. Google has a web page up here detailing among the options Gemini Nano powers on the Pixel 8 Professional, however a characteristic is also powered by completely different fashions on completely different gadgets. For what it is price, the rundown lists a “summarize” characteristic for the Google Recorder app and “good reply” in Gboard. Loads of Google apps have already got a “good reply” characteristic with out Gemini Nano. Third-party builders can even plug into the onboard Gemini Nano mannequin for his or her apps, but it surely’s laborious to think about anybody doing that with such restricted system help.
The opposite possibility is to simply overlook about doing all of this AI stuff on-device and simply do it within the cloud. As an incredible instance of this, none of this Gemini Nano stuff has something to do with the Google Gemini Chatbot, which all runs within the cloud. An enormous query is what it will imply for the smaller Google Pixel 8 going ahead. Google promised seven years of OS updates for the brand new Pixels, and to already be stripping down options because of “{hardware} limitations” after 5 months is a disappointment.