Google’s massive project to replace the tried-and-tested old Google Assistant with its smarter AI successor, Gemini, is running into a slight delay. The transition is definitely still happening, but will not be completed this year as originally promised. Instead, the company has confirmed that the rollout will extend into 2026, giving us all a little more time with the old Assistant while the kinks in the new experience are worked out.
Back in the spring, Google presented a bold vision to completely overhaul the way we use our smartphones.
The plan was to move from a traditional voice assistant that just follows commands to an AI capable of real thinking and deep contextual understanding. The original announcement in March suggested that we would see a quick “upgrade” to Gemini on mobile devices, with the old Assistant disappearing from newer Android phones and app stores in the following months.
But the launch of Gemini on mobile is much more than just a simple rebrand. Google sees this as a fundamental shift toward personalized, AI-powered help that understands natural conversations and can actually interact with the other apps on your phone. It’s built on the latest generative AI technology, enabling features like free-flowing chats in Gemini Live and the ability to provide complex, researched answers – things the old Assistant just couldn’t handle.
Despite these big ambitions and some early launches of Wear OS watches and Android Auto, Google is pumping the brakes. They want to make sure the transition goes really smoothly before finally retiring Assistant. In a quiet update to their support pages, it was clarified that transitioning mobile users to Gemini is now a process that will last until 2026 and will not be completed in 2025. The timeline for other platforms like cars is likely to be similarly slow.
For anyone who owns an Android phone, this means they won’t lose the assistant they know overnight.
You can still rely on it for basic things like setting timers, making calls, or answering quick questions. If you feel like it, you can manually download the Gemini app to try out the new features now. Eventually, Gemini will take over as the default, handling these daily tasks while also incorporating data from all your apps to provide much smarter help.
This delay basically shows that Google is playing it safe with a massive change. Replacing a system that was the backbone of Android for nearly a decade isn’t easy. It requires rigorous testing and slow improvements to work on billions of devices without breaking anything.
Google’s end goal remains the same: phase out Assistant and integrate Gemini into everything – tablets, headphones, smart home devices and cars. We’ll likely see this transition become much more aggressive in the first half of 2026 as Gemini becomes smarter and integrates deeper into the Google ecosystem.
