Battery drain. Display issues. Your Pixel may soon become its own tech support

Google seems to have slowly shifted its focus from raw hardware changes to deep Gemini AI integrations on its Pixel phones. It is evident from the fact that Big G is regularly releasing interesting features on its Pixel phones that are powered by Gemini, Magic Cue, for instance. The company is now reportedly working on a new capability for Gemini that will basically make it your Pixel's very own tech support.

New Device Help feature

A new option called Device Help has been spotted in the Gemini app. It has the same logo as the Magic Cue feature that is available on Pixel 10 devices, and it apparently diagnoses common issues on your Pixel phones and suggests the correct action you need to perform to address them. You simply need to write down the problem you are facing on your smartphone in natural language, and then the feature will give you a brief explanation about it along with a working solution.

For instance, you can give prompts like, "My phone battery is draining very fast." Gemini will take a few seconds to analyze your request and then come up with a relevant response. In my case, it has suggested three actions to improve the battery life of my Pixel phone: enable battery saver, adaptive battery, and dark mode.

Interestingly, you can make all the suggested changes right from the chat window itself instead of manually navigating to the Settings app. All you have to do is respond with "Confirm" and Gemini will then make all the suggested changes on your phone.

Gemini Device Help feature. | Image by PhoneArena

I was eager to know whether it could revert the changes made or not. So, I gave a relevant prompt, and the AI chatbot responded with the option to confirm whether I really wanted to revert the changes.

In another example, I gave a prompt that my screen is causing eye strain. The chatbot again took a couple of seconds and then came up with suggestions like enabling dark mode and reducing the phone brightness. It also gave the option to perform both tasks directly from the chat window.

What's been your biggest Pixel headache in the recent times?

It's an experimental feature

The important thing to note about the feature is that it is still in its experimental phase, meaning it might not be available for everyone. You can check if it is available on your device by opening the Gemini app and then tapping the plus icon in the text field.

Gemini has improved a lot

I often use AI tools for research purposes, but for the longest time I was hesitant to use Gemini after seeing plenty of its hallucination cases. I'm not saying that Google's AI has stopped hallucinating completely, but in recent times, the company has introduced so many interesting features to it, like incredible photo editing abilities, that I have been compelled to ditch other AI tools for it. In fact, many users on online community forums like Reddit also believe that Gemini is great for everyday tasks.

Device Help could turn out to be a really useful addition

As mentioned above, Device Help is still an experimental feature, but I really want it to become publicly available. The reason behind this is that it could really help users easily tackle smartphone problems they face on an everyday basis. However, it will be interesting to see the severity of issues it can tackle.

Pixel phones were recently reported to be experiencing boot loop issues. While the problem has been officially resolved, it will be interesting to see if users would actually tend towards using an AI to help resolve such complex situations if they occur again in the future, or whether they'll still prefer to take their device to a certified technician.

Google has made plenty of other changes to Gemini. Check them out:

Google is testing a genius new way to use Gemini on Android
Google is rolling out Gemini to low-end devices
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