Google Assistant is dying, and Gemini’s holding the knife in this week’s news

Late last summer, Google’s Pixel 9 series became the first phones to launch with Gemini as their default digital assistant. Samsung followed that up by replacing Bixby with Google’s new AI on its Galaxy S25 series a couple of months back. Now, Google says it’s ready to stop using Gemini as a selling point and kick off a new era for digital assistants on all of Android.

The week in mobile was a bit hectic, starting with a major Chromecast outage before ending on the news that Google Assistant is dying. Along the way, we learned iPhones will finally support end-to-end RCS encryption, saw the

Pixel 9a
at a lucha libre match, and got a new version of

Android 16
that officially takes the beta program into its home stretch.

Google Assistant is dying, and Gemini’s holding the knife

Google dropped a bit of a bombshell on Friday afternoon: Gemini will be replacing Google Assistant on most Android phones this year. Even bigger, the classic Google Assistant “will no longer be accessible on most mobile devices” by the end of the year, and you won’t be able to download a new copy of the app after that point.

In fact, the only users who won’t be switched to Google’s generative AI assistant are those whose phones don’t meet Gemini’s minimum system requirements. Similar changes are coming to your watches, headphones, smart speakers, and even cars — Gemini will take the wheel from Assistant in the coming months on these platforms, whether you like it or not.

Chromecasts have problems with or without Google TV

At the beginning of the week, people with second-gen Chromecasts and Chromecast Audios found that they were unable to cast to their devices. Google quickly acknowledged the issue, warning users to not factory reset their streaming dongles. The company followed up midweek to say it had identified the issue, and as the weekend got closer, announced it would start rolling out the fix.

Meanwhile, people on the now-discontinued Chromecast with Google TV were pleasantly surprised when Android 14 started rolling out to Google’s final Chromecast model, bringing features like Find My Remote and a customizable button from the newer Google TV Streamer. But the excitement didn’t last long, because by Friday, reports of numerous bugs started flooding in, ranging from broken peripherals to glitchy picture and sound quality.

iPhone RCS is finally going E2EE

When Apple finally brought RCS to iPhones, it didn’t implement some of the optional plugins Android users have enjoyed for years, instead only adopting the base RCS Universal Profile. This meant the Signal Protocol extension used by apps like Google Messages wasn’t present, so Android-to-iPhone chats weren’t fully end-to-end encrypted — something the FBI warned users about toward the end of 2024.

After we saw breadcrumbs over the last year suggesting a new encryption standard called MLS was being added to the Universal Profile, the GSMA all but confirmed it in December. Now, RCS Universal Profile 3.0 has been published, and it includes the new E2EE standard. Apple and Google have both confirmed they will be adopting the new version, so chats between Android and iPhone will soon be fully encrypted.

Android 16 goes (platform) stable

Android 16 hit a major milestone on Thursday, with Beta 3 taking Google’s next OS into its

platform stability
era. This means all app-facing behaviors have now been finalized, so the new APIs and other major behind-the-scenes changes are locked in. Now, all that’s left is to work through some final kinks and (hopefully) flip the switch on a few user-facing changes.

The new release also included bits of code that revealed a few forthcoming changes. A new Battery Health menu was found, and Google’s dormant DeX-like desktop mode got a big boost. An overhauled Quick Settings menu was activated by AOSP expert Mishaal Rahman, uncovering a split menu with new gestures to control it. And the main Settings menu appears to be getting a full card-style makeover, but one change we’re not too excited about looks like it was inspired by one of Apple Intelligence’s worst features.

The Pixel 9a might be only days away

If we’re going by the rumors we heard in January, we should expect to see the Pixel 9a on March 19, with shipments following a week later. And judging by the sheer audacity of the latest leaks, that timetable seems to be spot-on.

People aren’t just leaking Google’s next midranger anymore, they’re using it in the wild. One person showed off the phone’s cameras at a lucha libre match with hundreds of witnesses, and the video is still up after several days, so Google doesn’t seem particularly bothered by it. While that happened in Mexico, prospective buyers in the EU might get the best deal, as one leak said the phone will come with a free Google TV Streamer in that neck of the woods.