Google is winning on every AI front

I was a loyal Claude user until I decided to try Gemini 2.5. "After all", I thought, "I already use a Pixel phone, so it's integrated with Android. And with Google Drive. And I can get it through my Google One subscription."

And now that I'm on it, I don't think I'm going back. Google did it again.

Just to add, I am mainly an iPhone user. But I have a Google Pixel 6a for dev and testing reasons.

And Google Gemini for the voice assistant is excellent fun!

Just being able to ask it weird and wonderful whilst on a road trip with the kids is worth the cost of a cheap Pixel phone alone!

I have to seriously disagree on it for the "assistant" part. It is so terrible vs Google assistant.

There have been two really bad experiences that I had which boggled my mind.

These are transcribed because these were so bad I took a screenshot.

Example 1: "set an alarm for 15 minutes"

> Gemini sets the alarm for 1:15pm

"I want that to be 50 minutes"

> "you can change the duration of alarms in the clock app"

Example 2:

"what the temperature today"

> It is currently 5 degrees Celsius

- It was October in Sydney, the temperature was 22c with a low of 12c.....

Gemini never sets alarms for me and always points me to the app. Trying to call people is a crap shoot. Presumably there are settings for this somewhere, but there are like fifty sharing settings in four different places and it's impossible to know which apply to the old assistant or Gemini or both or just on the lock screen or to connected devices or... It's a mess.

It's even worse, when I tell it to set a timer now, it'll happily tell me it's been set -- but it hasn't (nothing in the app and I waited, to be sure). This is all reproducible and on a Pixel 8.

Timer works for me, it uses the "utilities" connection to do it.

I wonder if your utilities is disconnected, because it's the same for the alarm