Thanks. Looks like the current Gemini Nano is actually a separate model with the Gemma 3n architecture that has been distilled from Gemini 2.5 Flash[1].

Also, the next version of Gemini Nano will be based directly on Gemma 4 (so not distilled, not Gemini at all except for the name)[2].

So no, it's not a frontier model. Those don't run on your phone or in your browser.

[1]: https://developer.android.com/blog/posts/ml-kit-s-prompt-api...

[2]: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2026/04/AI-Core-De...

Oh, now I see your problem. You confused the pareto frontier with the pure scale frontier. They are very much not the same.

Also, distillation is how most of these smaller models are made from the biggest models. That process largely defines the frontier along most of the curve.