This is a submission for the Google I/O Writing Challenge
I know what Step 1 of an Android project looks like. Download Android Studio. Wait for Gradle to finish thinking, which takes longer than it should. Configure an emulator. Scaffold a project. Notice the SDK isn't the right version. Fix the SDK. Scaffold again. At this point, you have not written a single line of feature code, and you have already spent the better part of an hour.
At Google I/O 2026, Google shipped a feature in AI Studio that made me want to test whether any of that was still necessary. The claim:
Open Google AI Studio, describe the app you want to build in plain prompt, and a working native Android app - Kotlin, Jetpack Compose, installable via USB, appears in an embedded emulator on the right side of your screen.
I wanted to build exactly this. A real bill splitter. One with tip calculation, equal and percentage-based splits, and an AI-powered “smart split” that analyzes each person's order and suggests a fair breakdown using the Gemini API.
