GoKawiilJoe Maring / Android Authority
TL;DR Google has announced the launch of Gemini 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, and 3.5 Flash Cyber in CodeMender.
3.6 Flash is said to reduce output token usage by 17% compared to 3.5 Flash.
Google says it plans to make Gemini 3.5 Pro available broadly soon, and the team has started pre-training Gemini 4.
Back in May, Google released Gemini 3.5 Flash, its smartest speed model at the time. It’s been only about two months since then, but a new shiny AI model is ready to take its place. Google has announced the launch of Gemini 3.6 Flash. Along with 3.6 Flash, the company is also launching 3.5 Flash-Lite and 3.5 Flash Cyber in CodeMender.
Gemini 3.6 Flash: Features and highlights Gemini 3.6 Flash is billed as Google’s workhorse Flash model, delivering better coding, knowledge work, and multimodal performance than before. However, the biggest highlight appears to be the model’s efficiency. Based on data from the Artificial Analysis Index, Google says 3.6 Flash consumes 17% fewer output tokens than 3.5 Flash. It is also said to take fewer reasoning steps and tool calls to make its way through multi-step workflows.
On top of that, the model will be available at a lower cost than 3.5 Flash. The company has set the pricing at $1.50/1M input tokens and $7.50/1M output tokens.
But it’s not just about efficiency and cost; performance also improves with this new model. According to Google, 3.6 Flash is more precise, delivers fewer unwanted code edits, and reduces execution loops. Computer use has improved from 78.4% to 83% and there’s now a built-in client-side tool via the Gemini API and Gemini Enterprise. As the graphs above show, knowledge work benchmarks also favor the new 3.6 Flash.
Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite: Fastest model in the series The Gemini Flash series is built specifically for efficiency and speed. Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is the new cream of the crop in the 3.5 series for low-latency tasks and high throughput. The latest Flash-Lite model runs at 350 output tokens/s, priced at $0.3/1M input tokens and $2.5/1M output tokens. Outside of speed, it has a few other bragging rights as well.
Google says that 3.5 Flash-Lite offers “significantly better quality than 3.1 Flash-Lite.” It’s also said to significantly outperform the previous model. And 3.5 Flash-Lite doesn’t just outclass its predecessor, Google claims it even outperforms Gemini 3 Flash.
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