Google’s latest smartphone, the Pixel 9a, reportedly has a less capable version of the company’s Gemini large language model (LLM).
The search giant’s smartphone-sized Gemini Nano model requires 12GB of RAM. This is why each of the Pixel 9 smartphones sport 12GB of RAM, except the new Pixel 9a, which only offers 8GB of RAM. Because it has less RAM, it can’t use the regular version of Gemini Nano. Instead, it uses Gemini Nano 1.0 XXS, which means extra small.
Gemini Nano 1.0 XXS doesn’t run in the background and lacks multimodality, which means it’s text-only. It also doesn’t use the Pixel Screenshots app, as it can’t process images. I don’t think this is a big miss, though, as Pixel Screenshots still requires some work before it becomes beneficial.
Additionally, Call Notes, which summarizes a phone conversation, is unavailable (but that feature isn’t available in Canada anyway).
Notably, the Pixel 9a isn’t the first Pixel (or smartphone) to get a worse version of Gemini. Both the Pixel 8 and Galaxy S24 got a less capable Gemini Nano thanks to those devices having 8GB of RAM.
The Pixel 9a supports some AI features, though. Users can still get Recorder summaries because the recorder app creates transcriptions without Gemini’s help, and then Gemini Nano XXS creates text summaries based on the transcripts.
The Pixel 9a sports a fancier design and a great price tag, but it is more limited than we’ve seen in the past. While most people probably don’t care about a weaker version of the Gemini AI chatbot, it’s worth noting that some of these features are pretty useful, and it’s unfortunate that they won’t work on the Pixel 9a.
However, if you’ve never used a Pixel 9, then you might not notice what you’re missing — and ignorance is bliss.
Source: Ars Technica
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