Gemini 3.8 Live Extended Thinking vs Phonic v1

Phonic v1 is more reliable, by 37.8 points. Gemini 3.8 Live Extended Thinking passed 43 of 82 scenarios on all three runs, and Phonic v1 passed 74. A scenario only counts when every run of it passed.

For a voice agent, Phonic v1, since it gets more scenarios right on every run. Phonic v1 is ahead on reliability, success rate, agent responses, data accuracy, calls where the agent went quiet and response time, and Gemini 3.8 Live Extended Thinking on interruption.

Phonic v1, by 13.1 points. Gemini 3.8 Live Extended Thinking saved everything exactly right on 84.4% of the calls that save data, and Phonic v1 on 97.5%. On Booking calls, 88.9% against 100.0%. On Medicare calls, 72.7% against 90.9%. A call counts only when nothing is missing, wrong, extra or saved twice.

No. Phonic v1 starts replying 0.44s sooner at the median. Gemini 3.8 Live Extended Thinking takes 2.07s at the median and 2.74s at p90; Phonic v1 takes 1.63s and 1.81s. Both are measured on the call audio, from the caller finishing to the agent starting to reply.

Gemini 3.8 Live Extended Thinking, by 0.07 on a 0 to 5 scale. Gemini 3.8 Live Extended Thinking scores 4.95 and Phonic v1 4.88 for how well the agent handled being talked over.

Phonic v1, by 5.3 points. The agent went quiet for 10 seconds or more on 5.3% of Gemini 3.8 Live Extended Thinking calls and 0.0% of Phonic v1 calls.

There is no verified per-minute rate for Gemini 3.8 Live Extended Thinking, so cost cannot be compared yet.

Cekura ran both as the whole agent in the same open-source Pipecat pipeline, with the same prompt, tools and connection. A simulated caller worked through all 82 scenarios on live calls, three times each, 3,690 calls across the benchmark. A call passes only when the agent said the right things and saved the right data.