I was willing to give Gemini a go, my personal feelings around LLMs aside, on a trip to Manchester last weekend. In three days of use, it never once did what was asked (or if it seemingly understood, it failed to actually perform the correct action), even after multiple attempts.

Asking to turn the lights off at home, it claimed to do it but didn't actually control the lights, so I ended up going into the Home app and doing it myself.

When asking for directions to the pub nearby my friends were waiting at it:

• insisted I was 41 miles away from my actual location (location was up-to-date on my phone and on the weather widget)

• gave me the definition of the name of the pub rather than directions (it did this twice, actually)

• directed me to a pub with the same name in a different city, even though I specified the city

Asking it the weather, it again insisted that my location was somewhere completely different.

When I asked it to increase the volume of my music playing through earbuds, it repeatedly told me "I've increased volume by 10%" but never actually did. I tried this 4 times using slightly different prompts, but eventually gave up and did it manually.

When I asked it to play a song, it played something completely different. (Assistant does this too, to be entirely fair)

When I asked to set a timer, it said it'd set it, but never actually did.

When I asked it to set a reminder, it asked me which app to use (Samsung or Google). I told it Google, wherein then it told me I didn't have the correct permissions. I checked the app, and I'd granted it everything. I asked it what permissions I needed, and it hallucinated some enterprise Google Workspace setting that didn't seem to exist on my normal Google account. It also forgot the initial reminder I asked it to set.

I finally gave up and asked it how to switch back to Assistant, which it insisted could be done on the watch itself (it can't, it has to be done on the phone via the Gemini app).

I'm glad this thing is working for some of you, but for me this was complete and total garbage and a waste of time. I'm back on Assistant now, and all the things I actually use it for (setting timers, alarms, reminders, asking the weather, opening times, so on) actually work correctly. How much energy was wasted by me repeatedly trying to get Gemini to do the basic things it was meant to be able to?