![]() How about in the home? Ignoring the Galaxy Home no-show, support for Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa support has been added to many of the devices Bixby controlled early on. Not that it’s worth all this effort, as it rarely recognizes objects, and its translation isn’t as accurate as Google’s. To use it, you then have to install the Amazon Assistant app, change various permission settings, and then you can start using it. Samsung itself doesn’t even try to promote Bixby at this point.īixby Vision, the visual search component, is still part of the Galaxy S21 Ultra’s camera, despite the augmented reality aspects being shut down in October last year, but to find the rest you have to go to the More category first. However unlike the old Bixby button it can be remapped to perform other duties, none of which have to include waking up Bixby. The Bixby button, once a source of hate, has not made an appearance since the Galaxy S10, with Samsung preferring to use the Side Key (that’s the power key to you and me) to summon Bixby instead. Bixby Home, the swipe-in panel where Bixby once lived, has completely disappeared, as has the watered-down Samsung Daily page which replaced it in the more recent versions of Samsung’s OneUI. You really have to make an effort to use Bixby on the S21. Is poor, unloved Bixby even there? Andy Boxall/Digital Trends If you look at Samsung’s official “What is Bixby” page, the Galaxy S21 hasn’t even been added to the list of smartphones featuring the assistant yet. When I set my Galaxy S21 Ultra up it didn’t ask me anything related to Bixby. But it’s not just the general public that wants Bixby facing the wall in a corner Samsung is doing a good job of minimizing the assistant’s functionality on its phones. People really took against the virtual assistant, in a way few have with Google Assistant, Alexa, or even Siri. ![]() The effort to silence Bixby is clear when you search online, as for every one article on how to use Bixby, there are 10 more on how to disable or remove Bixby. Unsurprisingly Bixby failed to thrive, and the silent campaign began in earnest. The Galaxy S10 was the last Samsung phone to include a dedicated Bixby button, pushing the feature instead to a secondary action on the power button. With its champion gone, Bixby started to fade into the background at Samsung, as it minimized the feature’s importance on the latest smartphones and other products. In 2018, however, Rhee, who championed Bixby along with several other high profile cloud-related projects including Samsung Knox, left the company and joined Google, where he initially worked on its new IoT business. Sure enough, Bixby was eventually integrated into Samsung’s smart televisions, smart ovens, smart refrigerators, and many other IoT products. “It starts off with smartphones,” Rhee told Digital Trends in an interview about Bixby in 2017, “but anywhere that has an internet connection and a microphone, Bixby can be used.” ![]() ![]() Not just smartphonesīixby wasn’t all about the smartphone though, and Samsung envisaged Bixby being used on a host of other connected products. Not good for a friendly voice assistant we were supposed to want to talk to. Between the lofty expectations, hardcore promotion, and disappointing functionality, Bixby became unlikeable almost right from the start, even after a bit of rapping. Samsung really wanted you to use Bixby, but during that early phase there wasn’t much to actually do with it, and the voice commands that were available (and worked) weren’t especially helpful. Bixby’s irritatingly cheerful “Hi, I’m Bixby” greeting was enough to attract considerable ire, and much eye-rolling, from Samsung phone owners because it inevitably followed the accidental press of the Bixby button, or after forgetting the power button on a Samsung phone doesn’t actually access the power menu anymore. Samsung’s heavy-handed push to get us all using Bixby didn’t help endear us to the new assistant. That was amplified by Bixby being pitched as an assistant for performing actions on the phone, like navigating through apps or performing multi-app tasks, in addition to answering queries using information from the cloud. Even when it did arrive, Bixby had similar problems to other voice assistants during the early stages, ranging from not understanding your voice or accent to simply having limited overall functionality. But a launch delay meant Samsung failed to capitalize on any hype it had built up. Bixby was heavily promoted first on the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S9, going so far as to have a dedicated hardware button to invoke it. Unfortunately it was neither of these things. Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S9 may get a feature the iPad has never had Here’s everything we expect from Samsung’s next Unpacked event How one bad decision is ruining all of Samsung’s new phones
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