lets talk Bixby !!

[Berry me a G]

Obviously the S8 is looking great....But what about Bixby? Do you think this will be something cool or just more samsung clutter? ..Rumors of a dedicated hard button and if so what are the chances of personalizing/ replacing with Google Assistant?
Basically, is a Samsung AI appealing, scary or just a waste of time?

 

[Aquila]

Unappealing and a waste of time. Samsung has access to Google Assistant, for free. G just announced that it's coming to all devices on MM or higher.

Bixby isn't intended to be an awesome assistant and it'll never have the level of performance that will be possible when Alexa and GA grow up. But it has to exist because Samsung makes products that aren't phones - namely their TV's and home entertainment peripherals that can't use either of the above named services without meeting the conditions of licensing. Therefore, Bixby is intended to be used in those products but in order to raise awareness of the feature and introduce people to how it'll work, they put it on their phones, which get into the hands of many consumers. At best in a phone it's a gimmick, or sort of a "hey, we got that too" - but at worst, it's a waste of BILLIONS of dollars in this current form. When they bought this product I was really hoping that they were going to abandon the actual assistant part of it and would instead focus on integrating some of it's ideas into the rest of their OS.

Here is a simple test of how serious they are about launching a complete product: Have a conversation with it about your Amazon Prime videos and Google Play Music playlists.

 

[Aquila]

I forgot to mention that an enormous part of Samsung's business is non-consumer products and I suspect the real reason they purchased the product was to get a head start using some of the back end intelligence in their other product lines.

 

[rgfaith]

Also they are doing their own line of Tizen phones and there is no Google on those. So they will need their own Assistant to compete.

 

[Berry me a G]

so, Im hearing opinions of waste of time and just jumping on the band wagon... is there anything samsung could do to make it worthwhile in your opinion?
Again, if bixby gets a dedicated hard button and it sucks, well, that physical button sucks and will become a nuisance on the entire phone

 

[Snareman]

It seems like a waste to me when the functionality is already there from Google. I can't see that I'd ever use it unless it is something miraculous.

 

[Aquila]

Also they are doing their own line of Tizen phones and there is no Google on those. So they will need their own Assistant to compete.

I won't say those will "never" be mainstream, but it'll be at least 5 years or more before Samsung has a relevant Tizen phone. They've released them before and their terrible. I read about one they're developing now, but while we don't know the specs, we do know it's terrible. It's a budget device, not meant for mainstream markets.

 

[anon(27512)]

I'll reserve judgement until I buy my s8+. I will say that if bixby is anything like Siri, then fir me out will be a total dumpster fire. Siri almost never works for me and wastes time. If bixby works as well as Google assistant on the other hand, I'll love it.

 

[thegame161]

am I right that samsung are refusing to let users use google assistant or is it included in 7.0?

 

[anon(27512)]

am I right that samsung are refusing to let users use google assistant or is it included in 7.0?

I think it will have both. Kind of like svoice coexisted with Google now

 

[doa70]

I was a big fan of The Courtship of Eddie's Father.

 

[thegame161]

ah ok, be glad to use google assistant.

 

[ThrottleJohnny]

I hope that if you decide to disable Bixby, the button then defaults to a launch of another app, like Samsung Pay, or the Google Now page.

 

[anon(27512)]

I hope that if you decide to disable Bixby, the button then defaults to a launch of another app, like Samsung Pay, or the Google Now page.

Same. I hope I can map that button to Snapchat or the camera instead. I don't need one button access to an assistant.

 

[SaintHeisenberg]

Here are the reasons why I feel Samsung might come back into the battle of personal AI assistants and maybe even tip the playing field.

• Acquisition of Viv Labs, the company that was started by the creators of Apple’s Siri themselves which has already had their third-party integrations in the iOS
• They have learnt from their past mistakes, especially with their Samsung S Voice being so slow, clumsy, and unable to do what a personal AI assistant should do, that is to assist
• The need to lift up their image of their brand after being associated with explosions.
• Get more users to shift over to Samsung to increase their global market share
• Ambition. As they have already planned out their goals to bring Bixby to other home appliances.
• Most importantly, they are being different. Samsung knows, that they can’t compete with Google, Apple, Microsoft in this battle of the raw machine learning power and putting enormous amounts of information right at your fingertips. So Samsung has built Bixby to be a resilient AI assistant that carries out what it was meant to do which is provide you with options that can make it easier with the way you handle your daily tasks in your phone with a focus on productivity.

 

[zipro]

Unnecessary bloat. Google offers a range of excellent services that are built into every android phone. Why on earth Samsung has to add their own, usually crappier, version of every app completely beats me.

 

[ThrottleJohnny]

Unnecessary bloat. Google offers a range of excellent services that are built into every android phone. Why on earth Samsung has to add their own, usually crappier, version of every app completely beats me.

They're not all crappier. I much prefer their web browser to Google's and I prefer Samsung Pay over any other pay service. Although there is some stuff I wish they would cool it with, I wouldn't automatically count out Bixby. Our company tested an early version, and it was excellent.

 

[pgawk]

Don't see how it will be any better than Google assistant, which is going to be available on all devices as others aid. I think it's just a matter of trying to get people locked into an apple-esque ecosystem by having functionality with all the future samsung products you choose to buy. If it's not a total flop, it'll be interesting!

 

[thegame161]

Couple more days to see what it has to offer

 

[cjtayaban]

I am not sure this could be any greater than Google Assistant. Google's search engine is the most powerful as of today. It's the most used so I can say it has the most collection of data. Is Bixby also using Google as a search engine? If yes, then it's probably useless.