The Bixby. If we were to ask you to rank the top 3 Voice assistants in the modern era, there will be two constants: Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, with both the companies working extensively on these software assistants and over the past few years have been able to mature them a lot. Siri would be a questionable inclusion with Apple not using it as selling point anymore, it’s like they have accepted that Google and Amazon are now way ahead and way too difficult to catch, so they might just focus on other areas.
Must Read: Galaxy Unpacked
Then comes the Samsung Bixby. Its entirely possible that you might not have even heard of the voice assistant that nobody uses. But despite that Samsung has been keen to include it in all its flagships ever since the release of the Galaxy S8 back in 2017. Samsung wanted its very own voice assistant to lure its customers away from the Google’s assistant and to obviously increase sales. But in aiming to dethrone Google, they forgot that having a separate hardware key for an undernourished voice Assistant wont really do much in the plan of attracting customers. Bixby is inconsistent, not really integrated with other apps and just an example of Samsung bloatware. Google on the other hand, rules over our phones as the entire operating system: Android, belongs to Google and thus, is able to make Google Assistant an integral part of the whole ecosystem.
REMAPPING OF THE BIXBY BUTTON SOON-TO-BE POSSIBLE IN SAMSUNG’S FLAGHSIPS
Here comes the good part. The hardware key that Samsung initially planned to enable customers to launch Bixby, or should we say ‘structural bloatware’, is now remapable with the introduction of the Galaxy S10. It will allow single tap and double tap options for reassigning shortcuts, one of which has to be Bixby. The cherry on top being that this functionality will not only be available on the s10 but also Samsung’s previous high-end models the S9, NOTE 9, NOTE 8 and S8. So long as your device is running Android Pie (as well as the One-UI), Samsung says you’ll get Bixby button customization through a future software update. We don’t know exactly when that’s coming but still is a move that would be welcomes by all.
