I saw a demo of Gemini Live's multimodal video streaming and screen sharing support at Google I/O 2024, and admittedly, I was skeptical Project Astra would scale down to smartphones well. Fast-forward about a year later, and Project Astra is in the hands of millions of Google Pixel 9, Samsung Galaxy S25, and Gemini Advanced users. It's ready, and it's here — but is it actually useful?
The answer is that it absolutely can be, as long as its use cases are personal to you. For instance, Gemini Live's multimodal features aren't going to be a better alternative to Google Search or Circle to Search in most cases. However, in specific circumstances where it's better to show than tell, Gemini Live's camera support can come in handy.
