It’s no surprise that Samsung’s Galaxy S8 flagship is as popular as it is. Aside from the fact that it’s the successor to last year’s extremely popular Galaxy S7, it also followed this year’s trend of having smaller bezels to produce a larger display. But while the Galaxy S8 has a lot of good features to boast about, there are a couple of other features that, below the surface, don’t seem as great. Among those decisions was the inclusion of the Bixby button.
Actually, the Bixby button itself isn’t a bad idea. In fact, I think it’s a rather good idea. It’s a good way to discover Bixby, and I reckon that most people who discover the designated button for Samsung’s new AI assistant aren’t bothered by it. However, for people who do care and who prefer other assistants (like Google Assistant or Cortana) then the ability to remap would have been appreciated.
On the other hand, I do see how allowing the use of other assistants would go against the obvious agenda that Samsung has to promote Bixby, especially being the newcomer that it is. Still, if there's one thing I know about people it's that most of them don't like being told what to do. Forcing people to use the button just for Bixby was a bold move to promote the AI. I mean, even if you take other assistants out of the equation, it would still be nice to map that physical key to just about any other type of app that might be useful, such as the camera, text messages, calendar, e-mail, etc.
I am a little surprised at how hard Samsung is working to keep the Bixby button from being mappable. Samsung has taken some admirable strides these past couple of years to allow their bloatware programs to be disabled, at the very least, and while Bixby can be disabled as well, the physical button will simply be rendered useless rather than being able to replace it with something else. To me, that’s a difficult limitation to look past.
Now, obviously you can still use Google Assistant or Cortana or whatever on the Galaxy S8; that’s not the issue. The issue for me is that this phone costs an arm and a leg and you’re given this incredibly useful tool, as small as it is, and Samsung isn’t letting you use it unless you use it for what Samsung wants you to use it for. And yes, while that’s typical of Samsung, it does seem a little excessive in this case. With software limitations, there are often ways around it; this issue includes a physical part of the phone that can’t be used for anything but this one specific function that many people won’t have an interest in using.
I wasn’t interested in the Galaxy S8 because I feel that the Galaxy S7 is still a good device, even in direct comparison. However, even if I didn’t have the Galaxy S7 to compare it to, knowing that Samsung is trying so hard to lock down the Bixby button would have caused me to look elsewhere anyway. I still think it’s a great idea to put it there to begin with – the BlackBerry KEYOne has a mappable “convenience key” that is pretty cool - but not allowing the small amount of people that would even bother to map it to something else do their thing seems like a silly thing to put so much effort into preventing.
Readers, what are your thoughts about the Bixby button? Are you unfazed by the inability to map it to something else, or has the issue prevented you from picking up a Galaxy S8 of your own? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
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