Gemini Nano will not be coming to the Pixel 8

Last year, Google announced its new LLM called Gemini. There are several versions of Gemini, including Gemini Nano that is designed to run directly on mobile devices. It is basically an on-device AI versus the Pro and Ultra models that are run in the cloud. Unfortunately, it will not be making its way onto the Pixel 8.

Google announced towards the end of 2023 that Gemini Nano would be finding its way onto the Pixel 8 Pro. During The Android Show, a Google engineer from the Android generative AI team confirmed that Gemini Nano will not be coming to the Pixel 8 due to "hardware limitations". The company did reassure that they are working to bring Nano to more devices in the future, specifically "high-end" devices.

Based on that statement, this is bad news for Pixel 8 owners and owners of lower-end Android devices. In terms of specs, the Pixel 8 only differs from the Pixel 8 Pro in the RAM department. The Pixel 8 comes with 8GB of RAM while the Pro model comes with 12GB of RAM. Otherwise, both are powered by the same Tensor G3 chipset.

So, what are Pixel 8 owners missing out on? In this instance, they would be missing out on features like the Recorder's Summarize feature and Gboard Smart Reply. Hopefully Google will come up with a cloud-based alternative in the future, but for now, this is the situation we are in.