So Google I/O 2026 happened and honestly I was not expecting this much. Like every year I sit and watch the keynote thinking "okay this time it will be boring" but no, they surprised me again. <3
This time the big thing is Gemini 3.5 Flash and also a new model called Gemini Omni. I spent some time playing with Gemini 3.5 Flash after the announcement and wanted to share my honest first look kind of thing.
What Even is Gemini 3.5 Flash?
So basically Google is saying Gemini 3.5 Flash is their smartest Flash model till now. The Flash series was always the fast and cheap one, right? But this time they are saying it is also crossing 3.1 Pro in benchmarks for coding and agentic tasks. And it is 4x faster than other frontier models in output tokens per second.
That is a big claim. So I tried it.
The speed part is actually true, I can say that much. It feels noticeably snappy. Like when you are doing back and forth with it , asking follow ups, correcting it , it does not make you wait much.
How to Get Started With It
If you want to try yourself, it is quite simple actually.
Step 1 : Go to Google AI Studio
Just open aistudio.google.com. You need a Google account, that is it. No waiting list or anything like that for Flash.
Step 2 : Select the Model
On the top there is a model dropdown. Select gemini-3.5-flash. It is available from today itself, they said it in the keynote.
Step 3 : Try a Prompt
Start with something simple. I tried giving it a small React component to write and then asked it to add error handling also. It did both in one shot, which was nice.
Step 4 : Try it via API also
If you want to use it in your own project, the Gemini API supports it now. Here is a basic example:
import google.generativeai as genai
genai.configure(api_key="YOUR_API_KEY")
model = genai.GenerativeModel("gemini-3.5-flash")
response = model.generate_content("Explain async await in Python in simple words")
print(response.text)
Very straightforward. You can get the API key from AI Studio itself, there is a button called "Get API key" in the left sidebar.
What I Actually Liked
The coding part is genuinely better. I gave it a messy function with some bugs and asked it to fix and also explain what was wrong. It found three issues I had not even noticed. Previous Flash models used to miss the subtle ones.
It understands context well. In a long conversation it does not forget what you said earlier. I was testing a multi-step debugging scenario and it remembered the original code I shared even after 6-7 messages.
Speed is actually fast. I know I said this already but seriously, for something this capable it is very fast. Other frontier models you can feel the thinking pause. This one is much snappier.
What I Did Not Like So Much
Honestly the output length can be a bit much sometimes. You ask a simple question and it gives you a full essay. I had to keep saying "give shorter answer" which is a little annoying.
Also Gemini 3.5 Pro is apparently coming next month, not today. So right now Flash is the best available in the 3.5 series. Pro would probably be more powerful for complex reasoning tasks.
What About Gemini Omni?
This one is different category. Gemini Omni is not just text , it takes image, audio, video, and text as input and can output video. Yes, video output. I have not tested it fully yet because access is more limited, but the demo they showed at the keynote was quite impressive. It is more of a creation model.
For regular developer work Gemini 3.5 Flash is the one to focus on right now.
Should You Try It?
Yes, just go try it. It is free to use in AI Studio for basic usage. The API has some free tier also. If you are building anything with AI :- agents, coding tools, chatbots , Gemini 3.5 Flash is now genuinely a strong option, not just a cheap fallback.
The agentic stuff Google is building around it with Antigravity platform is also interesting but that is a separate topic altogether. Maybe next post.
For now, just open AI Studio and play around. That is the best way to see for yourself.
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