I replaced Gemini with Perplexity, and it’s a more reliable assistant for Android

Published Sep 27, 2026, 6:30 AM EDT Dibakar Ghosh is a tech journalist at How-To Geek with over a decade of experience using and writing about open-source software, Linux, Android, AI, and personal productivity. He writes about software, operating systems, and tools that help people get more from the technology they already use. If you use an Android phone, you’re probably using Gemini as your default AI assistant. Google made it the natural successor to Google Assistant, and while it’s not completely superior to the original, it does integrate deeply with Android, letting you control much of your phone with natural-language commands. However, because it’s Android and not Apple, you aren’t necessarily locked into using just Gemini. Android allows you to change your default assistant and use something else entirely. So I did. I tried a few of the major AI assistants available on Android, and I eventually settled on Perplexity. And here’s why I think it’s simply a better deal overall. Why Perplexity — why not Claude or ChatGPT There are some things those models just can’t do You can technically set Claude and ChatGPT as your default AI assistant. Simply head into Settings -> Apps -> Default Apps -> Digital assistant app, and both apps will show up if you have them installed on your phone. However, just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Don’t get me wrong, Claude and ChatGPT are arguably two of the biggest names in AI right now. If you want an AI to answer questions, write something, analyze a document, help you code, or simply have an intelligent conversation with you, they’re among the first options that come to mind. But being a great AI chatbot and being a great phone assistant aren’t quite the same thing. For example, with ChatGPT set as the default digital assistant, you can press and hold the power button to invoke it, similar to Perplexity, but you’re mostly limited to chatting with it and asking questions. It can’t perform any actions on your phone. Now, Claude recently got an update that allows it to create timers, alarms, and calendar events on your phone. However, it’s still somewhat limited, can't control most of the system apps, and lacks deeper OS level access. A proper Android assistant should integrate deeply enough with the OS to do things on your behalf. Gemini has a major advantage here, but that’s a given since it’s the first-party assistant from the OS manufacturer. However, Perplexity is pretty close. It can do almost all the things Gemini can, and, at least in my experience, it’s been far more reliable and efficient. Perplexity can do almost everything Gemini can do It’s better at doing everything I need to do In my testing, I’ve found Perplexity to be far more capable than other third-party AI assistants. It can set alarms and timers, create calendar events, make calls, send messages, play media, launch apps, and a lot more. That said, while this gives it the upper hand over other “assistants” like Claude and ChatGPT, it isn’t necessarily better than Gemini, because Google’s official assistant can do all of that and more. Where Perplexity does pull ahead is in reliability and overall efficiency. I’ve had multiple occasions where Gemini told me it couldn’t perform an action, even though I knew for a fact that it was within its capabilities. There have also been situations where it told me that it had created an alarm for me — which was very important — only for me to later find out that the alarm was never created. Now, what good is a capable assistant if it doesn’t make use of those capabilities? In fact, that’s actually why I started exploring different AI assistants in the first place. And I’ve found Perplexity to be far more reliable, competent, and coherent. It knows what it can do and does it when asked. Now, I should mention that Perplexity doesn’t have the full feature set that Gemini does. One notable omission is smart home device integration. You can’t control your smart bulb or other IoT devices using Perplexity, which you can with Gemini. However, for me, that’s not a problem because I personally don’t own or use any smart home devices. Perplexity Pro Key highlights Access to advanced AI models, unlimited basic searchs and hundreds of Pro searches daily, multimodal capabilities, and more Brand Perplexity Perplexity is a search engine that harnesses the power of AI to get you the information you need. And its Pro subscription provides more access to must-have features like unlimited free searches, hundreds of Pro searches, AI selection, and more. Gemini vs. Perplexity as a subscription is a different story, though Both are optimized for different things While you can use both Gemini and Perplexity as digital assistants on your Android phone, it’s worth noting that they’re fundamentally different products, offering different value propositions. Gemini makes the most sense if you’re deeply invested in the Google ecosystem. It offers seamless integration with Google Workspace apps like Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Drive, and more. It’s also the only paid AI subscription that bundles 5TB of storage with its base $20 plan. No other AI model does that. On the flip side, you’ve got Perplexity, whose main unique selling point is that it acts as a model aggregator. If you’re on the paid plan, it gives you access to the latest versions of Claude, ChatGPT, and other open-source models soon after they’re released. Then you can use any of these models for autonomous workflows similar to OpenClaw using Perplexity Computer. It’s also one of the best AI search engines out there and extremely reliable for deep research — even more so than Gemini. All that said, I should mention that I haven’t found the quality of the AI assistants to improve when you switch from a free plan to a Pro plan. As such, you don’t necessarily need to cancel your Gemini subscription just to use Perplexity. You can simply set it as your default AI assistant and use it for that while keeping your Gemini subscription and accessing that sweet 5TB of storage space. If I had to pick one, I’d pick Perplexity As someone who writes about AI and technology in general, I have active subscriptions to Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. But if all of those subscriptions disappeared tomorrow and I could keep only one, I’d pick Perplexity. Firstly, it gives me access to all the Claude and ChatGPT models, making them technically redundant. And its deeper and more reliable integration with my Android phone makes it my assistant of choice.