Earlier this month, the absence of Gemini Nano on the Pixel 8 was attributed to "hardware constraints," but Google announced today that LLM on the device is indeed on the way. In the developer preview, the Pixel 8 will receive Gemini Nano to support summaries in Recorder and intelligent replies in Gboard.
The latter enables "higher-quality intelligent responses" with a "conversational understanding" and faster generation. On the Pixel 8 Pro, it can be used with WhatsApp, Line, and KakaoTalk. Meanwhile, the Recorder can extract recordings and generate highlights.
The main hardware difference between the two Tensor G3 phones is the 8 GB and 12 GB of RAM. Google stated today that "running large language models on phones with different memory specifications will result in different user experiences, so we have tested and validated this on the Pixel 8."
It appears that Google has found a way to run LLM on less memory without affecting other user experiences, much like the smaller Galaxy S24. It's worth noting that Google only mentioned Gemini Nano coming to the Pixel 8 Pro back in December. Meanwhile, earlier this month, comments came from an engineer outside the Pixel team. Gemini Nano is set to land on the Pixel 8 with the next Pixel feature drop, which is Android 14 QPR3 in June (if the previous schedule holds). In addition to end users getting these two Google app features, developers using the Pixel 8 will also be able to use AICore in their own apps.
