Google’s Android Chief Hopes Its ‘New Era’ Will Get People to Ditch Their iPhones

And that brings us to the third focus for Android, which is the connecting line between all the Android ecosystem products—artificial intelligence. Almost the entirety of Google’s keynote was spent on Gemini, the chatbot replacing the nine-year-old Google Assistant in everything from Android Auto and Wear OS, to smartphones and now Android XR. But this is what Samat says makes Android XR unique, as it’s the “first Android platform built for the Gemini era.”

He went on with a cluster of examples, like asking Gemini to summarize the chapter of a book you’re reading based on the images it captured as you turned the pages over, or having it scour your emails in Gmail for the answer to a question, hands-free through the glasses. “It gives you superpowers when you put them on,” Samat says.

Will this AI-first approach help change the minds of Americans and get them on board the Android train? Samat didn’t say, but he did claim his 14-year-old son learned to do the laundry for the first time with Gemini on a Pixel 9 Pro. (Samat insists that his son willingly chose a Pixel as his phone.) Using Gemini’s new live camera mode, where the assistant can see what you’re seeing via the phone’s camera, his son was able to ask what settings to use for the load of laundry in front of him. Gemini identified the washing machine and correctly offered up the right settings and instructions, which meant no pink-colored shirts that were originally white. “You see the future first on Android; it’s all coming to Android, so I really hope people will take another look.”

The new Android XR platform comes at a time when Google is facing incredible scrutiny from regulatory bodies. The US Department of Justice still wants the company to sell off Chrome, and a jury decided the Google Play Store was an illegal monopoly. “Android is one of the most open operating systems that’s ever been created,” Samat says. “There are some interesting myths—that Gemini can be the only AI assistant on Android, when it’s very easy for consumers to choose others like Perplexity or OpenAI.”

But when asked about how Android XR will navigate these core issues—will Gemini be the only assistant on Android XR? Will apps be forced to be deployed to an XR version of the Play Store, where Google collects up to 30 percent of sales? Samat says it’s too “early to talk about how all of that will work.” The first Android XR mixed-reality headset arrives later this year, but he promises the company “won’t deviate from Android’s openness.”

Then there’s the privacy side of strapping cameras and microphones to a person’s face. More than 10 years ago, anyone wearing Google Glass was immediately dubbed a “Glasshole,” but as Meta’s smart glasses have showed, the world has a different level of comfort with smart glasses. Still, it’s not just about taking photos and videos for social media—Meta’s developing new glasses that can recognize people’s faces. Samat promises that Android XR will have a clear set of standards for manufacturers to follow, just like on Android, to build around data sharing, security, and privacy. “I think this is a very important issue, and we’ve learned a lot from the past.”