Android in the time of AI

By Allison Johnson , a reviewer with 10 years of experience writing about consumer tech. She has a special interest in mobile photography and telecom. Previously, she worked at DPReview.

The AI gadgets that were supposed to save us from our phones have arrived woefully underbaked — whatever illusions we might have held that the Humane AI pin or the Rabbit R1 were going to offer any kind of salve for the constant rug burn of dealing with our personal tech is gone. Hot Gadget Spring is over and developer season is upon us, starting with Google I/O this coming Tuesday.

It also happens to be a pivotal time for Android. I/O comes on the heels of a major re-org that put the Android team together with Google’s hardware team for the first time. The directive is clear: to run full speed ahead and put more AI in more things. Not preferring Google’s own products was a foundational principle of Android, though that model started shifting years ago as hardware and software teams collaborated more closely. Now, the wall is gone and the AI era is here. And if the past 12 months have been any indication, it’s going to be a little messy.

So far, despite Samsung and Google’s best efforts, AI on smartphones has really only amounted to a handful of party tricks. You can turn a picture of a lamp into a different lamp, summarize meeting notes with varying degrees of success, and circle something on your screen to search for it. Handy, sure, but far from a cohesive vision of our AI future. But Android has the key to one important door that could bring more of these features together: Gemini.

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