- The Gemini for Home rollout hasn’t had a great reception so far
- One video has emerged showing it getting some tasks “absolutely wrong”
- Others are frustrated with bugs and features being locked behind a paywall
The initial rollout of Gemini for Home isn’t exactly going without a hitch, and a new YouTube video demonstrates some of the issues with the smart home service – while users are spotting that some features that were previously free are now being paywalled.
The video was uploaded by Adam Hrivnacky (via Android Authority), and shows a variety of problems. It also highlights how inferior the Gemini experience seemingly is on smart devices compared to the Gemini assistant on a smart phone.
For example, hinting that the temperature is too cold doesn’t bring up smart thermostat controls, but leads to a message about a Spotify account not being connected – just one of the “absolutely wrong” responses that Hrivnacky notices during his demo.
Gemini on a Nest Hub refuses to control smart lights too, something which Gemini on a phone is able to handle. Reminders and tasks are another feature that works fine in the Gemini mobile app but not via Gemini for Home – more evidence that Google has plenty of work to do to get this service up to speed.
Pay up for Continued Conversation
As the YouTuber himself acknowledges, Gemini for Home is still in its early stages of being rolled out, and bugs are perhaps to be expected. Still, it’s a rather frustrating experience for users right now, and it appears that some of the basic smart home tasks are still being handed off to Google Assistant when Gemini doesn’t know what to do.
Meanwhile, as pointed out by Ben Patterson at PCWorld, switching from Google Assistant to Gemini for Home also removes the Continued Conversation feature, which lets you ask follow-up questions without saying “hey Google” each time.
If you want a natural flow to your chats, you’ll have to pay for a Google Home Premium subscription, with prices starting at $10 / £8 / AU$15 a month. That’s replacing the old Nest Aware plan, and comes with extras such as extended video archives for cameras.
Making such a fundamental shift to a smart home ecosystem was always likely to come with technical issues attached, but this isn’t much fun for the early access users currently switching over – and Google needs to squash these bugs quickly.
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