Once upon a time, deep research involved a card catalog, microfiche, a staggeringly heavy amount of books, and a lot of time. There’s something romantic about sitting at a library table (or on the floor of your apartment), staring at stacks of books and papers on a particular subject, trying to mine as much information as possible.
Today, those books, papers, tables, and time aren’t exactly needed. Thanks to modern artificial intelligence, everything can be done from your phone.Kind of sucks the wind out of the whimsy, but it gets the job done with speed and convenience. Since I’m a proud member of Gen X, I’m not saying if this is a good or a bad thing, but it is certainly a thing, nonetheless.
Also: iPhone users just got access to Gemini’s Deep Research – how to try it
I recently employed Gemini’s new Deep Research feature (which was added in a recent Android update) to see how it worked, and my initial impression was that it’s pretty impressive. OK, it’s really impressive.
During my initial trial, I was researching time travel for my most recent novel and needed to go a bit deeper than simply reading a single online article. Really, what I wanted was to dive down the rabbit hole and see where it took me, and I thought Gemini’s Deep Research model would be the perfect option. Ergo, I gave it a go.
Also: Gemini’s Deep Research browses the web for you – try the Android app now for free
I was immediately surprised at how well Google has designed this tool to really assist the user. When creating a deep research topic, you have all the control you need to get the most out of the service.
Let me show you how I successfully used the new Gemini Deep Research app – and how you can, too.
How to run your first Deep Research query
What you’ll need: To make this work, you’ll need a device running the latest version of Gemini. As of March 2025, Deep Research is available for all Gemini users. You’ll also want to have a topic to dig into. My topic in question is “What advancements have been made in the field of time travel?” With your device and topic handy, let’s dive deep into the wells of research.
Open Gemini on your device. From the main window, tap the LLM drop-down at the top center and, when prompted, tap Deep Research.
Make sure to select the Deep Research model or this won’t work.
Jack Wallen/ZDNET
And a fine hello to you as well, Gemini.
Jack Wallen/ZDNET
In the resulting page, you can either tap “Start research” (to begin the process) or tap “Edit plan” to change the parameters of the search.
I like to edit the plan so I can see exactly what Gemini is going to do.
Jack Wallen/ZDNET
If you tap “Edit plan” you’ll be presented with a page that allows you to edit the entire research plan, line by line, to perfectly fit your needs. You can edit the plan by tapping anywhere on the page and making the necessary changes. To do this, you can either export the plan to Google Docs or open it in a new Gmail window and make the changes within the edit pane.
Once you’ve made any changes, copy the new query and paste it back into the prompt (from where you copied the text). After pasting the edited query into the prompt, tap Send.
Also: Google launches Gemini with Personalization, beating Apple to personal AI
Gemini automatically puts together a “plan” which is a longer, more complex than the average.
Jack Wallen/ZDNET
In the resulting page, tap “Start research” and Gemini will do its thing. Don’t bother waiting for the process to complete because it can take some time (especially if you’re researching a more challenging topic). Don’t worry about missing the results, as Android will alert you.
The time it takes to complete the research will depend on how complicated the topic is.
Jack Wallen/ZDNET
One cool thing I discovered is that after the research is complete, you can view it from any Android device (phone or tablet) associated with the same Google account used on the original device. This way, you not only will never miss the results of your research, but you can also access it from all of your Android devices.
Also: Why I integrate Gemini with Chrome (and you should too)
And that’s how I use Gemini for deeper insights into the subjects I need to research. Not only does it help me to understand complicated subjects, but it helps improve my understanding of how AI works (thanks to the ability to edit the research plan), and it gives me all sorts of new rabbit holes to dive into.
