Samsung launched Bixby 2.0 with the Galaxy Note 9, promising some big changes with its personal assistant. It appears that the biggest change is that the button can no longer be turned off, and developers are unable to remap it (without root access). Bixby was announced last year with the Galaxy S8, and Samsung started adding Bixby-specific buttons onto its smartphone then. Many have wanted to turn off that Bixby button as it gets pressed way to often. So Samsung did add an option to turn it off, while third-party developers created apps to remap that button to do things like open Google Assistant. Those options are now gone. But Samsung could turn around and bring it back in a software update. However, that is very unlikely.
This is unfortunate for those that are looking to buy the Galaxy Note 9 – or maybe already pre-ordered it – and were hoping to disable the button, or at least remap it to something else. But Samsung apparently wants to make sure that everyone uses Bixby to some extent. Bixby is a personal assistant from Samsung, that is still in its infancy so it doesn’t work all that well. Especially when compared to something like Siri or Google Assistant. Which is why many want to turn off that button. Not to mention the fact that the button is very sensitive and gets pressed all the time, even when you don’t want to press it.
The Galaxy Note 9 is Samsung’s latest and greatest smartphone, with some really great features and specs. It sports a 6.4-inch Quad HD+ Super AMOLED display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 chipset, 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, or 8GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. It also has a rather massive battery, at 4000mAh capacity. The Galaxy Note 9 is priced at $999, and it will be shipping starting this Friday. Though, some pre-orders are already landing in owners’ hands, which is nice for those that did pre-order after the device was announced on August 9.