Gemini, the Pixel Watch and iPad selfie cameras

Instruction Set, July 26th

Welcome back to Multicore. This is Instruction Set for July 26th.

I have returned from Canada, where I did at least attempt to stay vaguely on top of tech news, but it doesn’t look like I missed much during the summer doldrums. Still, things should be ramping up soon enough, and there’s a bunch to catch up on from the past week.

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Google has rolled out Gemini for Wear OS watches. It replaces the Google Assistant with an app update, and can be accessed by holding down the side button or saying “Hey Google”.

This sounds like kind of a routine release — on one hand, why wouldn’t Gemini be on smartwatches, and on the other, why wasn’t it before now? But I think it could actually be a pretty big deal at a time when everyone’s wondering how AI hardware is going to shape up.

Apple obviously has an advantage among smartwatch wearers in that the Apple Watch is by far the best product on the market, which in turn makes the iPhone much stickier. But Google’s AI suite on smartphones is streets ahead of Apple’s, and to the extent that anyone might make ecosystem decisions based on AI capabilities, extending Gemini to the wrist makes a lot of sense. It’s certainly going to be more useful than the Apple Watch version of Siri.

I’ve been using Gemini for a while with the Pixel Buds Pro 2, so it’s not like this is the first time it’s been available on wearables, but after using it for a few days on the Pixel Watch 3 I much prefer the experience of having a little screen to read the answers on. I’m going to live with it for a while more and see if it’s something I end up relying on more often.

That said, if Google really wants to turn me into a Gemini power user it should just make a proper Mac app, because that’s the main thing keeping me on ChatGPT.

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Speaking of the Pixel Watch, it looks like the next version will have a new charging design. Here’s a leaked render from Android Headlines: