Gemini will soon be making phone calls and sending messages, even if your phone is locked

Google has been working for months to make Gemini a more powerful phone assistant, and this latest update brings a useful and welcome improvement: the ability to make calls and send messages without having to unlock your device first.

This new feature can be found in Gemini Settings > Gemini on the lock screenis currently being introduced. You will see a new setting named Make calls and send messages without unlocking it. To use it, you’ll also need to make sure you have the Gemini Phone and Messages extensions enabled. At this time I do not have these available, so your mileage may vary.

Even if you don’t have these extensions yet (they’re still rolling out), this new setting still works by switching to Google Assistant in the background. Previously, if you tried to call using Gemini while your phone was locked, you would receive an error message First you need to unlock your device News. But with this update, the will call is forwarded directly; No unlocking required!

This is a small but significant step forward for Gemini on mobile phones as a replacement for some of the more basic tasks that Google Assistant was so good at. Again, this feature is still rolling out (along with any necessary enhancements), so you may not see it right away. If you’re dying to give it a try, you can try joining the Google app beta program, force stopping after the update, and restarting the app (while keeping your fingers crossed) to see if you get this now have new update. Unfortunately this hasn’t worked for me yet, but I just signed up for the beta a while ago.

VIA: 9to5 Google