First introduced with the Galaxy S8/S8+, Bixby is Samsung’s take on virtual assistants, competing directly against the likes of Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. While we can’t say for sure how much of a difference Bixby will make to the overall user experience of the Galaxy S8/S8+ (so far, not much), it appears that Samsung has lately been trying hard to increase the adoption of its new virtual assistant — by force.
As you might already know, the Galaxy S8/S8+ comes with a dedicated hardware button to make it easier for users to quickly launch Samsung’s new virtual assistant. It was earlier discovered that with the help of some applications, you could remap the Bixby button to launch Google Assistant or other activities.
Unfortunately, that didn’t last long as Samsung patched the software on the Galaxy S8/S8+ via an update to no longer allow applications to remap the Bixby button. However, some developers once again found a workaround to remap the Bixby button.
But it looks like Samsung is once again making it difficult for applications to remap the Bixby button. Android Police reports that the June security update for the Galaxy S8/S8+ on T-Mobile has rendered many of the popular remapping applications unusable.
Interestingly enough, it seems only T-Mobile models are affected at the moment as the other models with the June security update are still working fine with these remapping applications. It’s possible that Samsung could be experimenting these upcoming restrictions on the T-Mobile model before it makes its way to other models, however, that’s just a speculation on our part.
In any case, this is really disappointing from Samsung, especially when you consider that the full experience of Bixby isn’t yet available in most of the markets. Allowing users to officially remap the hardware button to launch activities other than Bixby would have been a more viable approach than forcefully shoving the service down users throats.
Source: Android Police
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