Supercharging Android Apps with On-Device AI: Gemini Nano

Mobile AI revolution is increasingly moving on-device, driven by demands for privacy, low latency, and offline capability. In this session, I’ll demonstrate how to leverage cutting-edge on-device AI tools including Gemini Nano, Google Edge AI SDK, and MediaPipe LLM Inference APIs to build intelligent Android apps entirely on-device.

Key Takeaways:

* On-Device AI Landscape - Understand the shift from cloud to on-device AI, the privacy benefits, and real-world use cases for features like smart reply, summarisation, image analysis, and more.

* Getting Started with Gemini Nano - Walk through integrating Google’s Gemini Nano generative model into a modern Android app, highlighting both ML Kit Gen-AI APIs and the experimental AI Edge SDK for custom scenarios.

* Beyond Gemini - MediaPipe, LiteRT, and Custom Models: Explore the MediaPipe ecosystem for LLM (large language model) inference on-device, and how to bring your own models using LiteRT/TensorFlow Lite for specialised tasks.

* Production Considerations - Address model size, device compatibility, privacy, and performance optimisation lessons learned from deploying AI features at scale in consumer and enterprise Android apps.

Session to be presented on Droidcon Uganda 2025 on 10th November.

Build Your Pocket Brain: Custom On-Device LLMs via MediaPipe on Android

The era of cloud-dependent Generative AI presents challenges in latency, cost, and user privacy. The next frontier is on-device AI, and MediaPipe's new LLM Inference API is leading the charge for Android developers. beyond simply running pre-trained models like Gemma on a device, we will dive deep into the power of customisation using Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA), a parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT) technique.

You'll learn the end-to-end workflow for creating a specialised, on-device LLM tailored to your app's unique domain. We will cover how to take a base model (like Gemma or Phi-2), fine-tune it with your own dataset using the PEFT library in Python, convert both the base model and the LoRA weights into the MediaPipe-compatible FlatBuffer format, and finally, integrate this custom-tuned model into an Android application.

we will demonstrate how to configure LlmInferenceOptions in kotlin to load both the base model and the .tflite LoRA file, unlocking hyper-personalised AI experiences that are fast, offline-capable, and completely private.

Key Takeaways

* Understanding when to use MediaPipe LLM Inference / gemini nano on-device generative AI solutions.

* Setup and configure MediaPipe LLM Inference for on-device generative AI.

* Expertise in LoRA fine-tuning to adapt LLMs like Gemma-2B or Phi-2 for specific use cases cost-effectively.

* Dive into Configuration options and multimodal prompting.

* Knowledge of deployment workflows, GPU-accelerated LoRA inference, and ethical AI practices that we should follow.

Session to be presented on Droidcon Abu Dhabi 2025 on 13th December.

Beyond the Grid: Crafting a Custom Android Launcher from Scratch

As the creator of Simple Launcher, a minimalist text-based launcher, I've navigated the unique challenges of replacing one of Android's most fundamental components. This lightning talk will demystify the process of building a custom launcher experience that sits at the powerful intersection of the Android system and the user.

We'll cut through the complexity and get straight to the essentials:

What is a launcher, how it sit between us and android system? How can we build a custom launcher? Things to consider while building custom experience !!

The Core Foundation: We'll explore how to leverage key Android APIs like PackageManager to query and manage installed applications, and how a Clean Architecture approach can keep your launcher robust and maintainable.

Staying in Sync: A launcher must be a living part of the system. I'll demonstrate how to effectively use BroadcastReceivers to respond instantly to app installations, updates, and uninstalls, ensuring your UI is never out of date.

Navigating the Maze: Building a launcher isn't just about code; it's about compliance and compatibility. We'll cover the necessary permissions (including the crucial QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES) and discuss the real-world complexities of dealing with OEM-specific quirks and Android version fragmentation.

The Accessibility "Hack": In a surprising twist, I'll share how I creatively leveraged Accessibility Services—often a tool for assistance—to implement powerful features like an app blocker, and discuss the ethical considerations and pitfalls of this unconventional approach.