Samsung releases Bixby update for Note 9; can not (yet) switch off

Samsung anticipates Galaxy Note 9 users who are irritated by Bixby. An update ensures that the assistant appears less quickly.

Galaxy Note 9 Switching off Bixby is not yet available

If you have a Galaxy Note 9 , you will receive an update for the Bixby app from today. After installation you can go to the settings of the voice-assisted assistant for a new option. Under the option 'Bixby-button' you can now choose 'Press twice to open Bixby'. By default, the assistant opens as soon as you press the button once.

Bixby can be switched off on the Galaxy S9 (left) but not on the Galaxy Note 9 (right)

On the side of all flagships that Samsung has released recently, there is a button to activate Bixby. On the Galaxy S9 and earlier devices there was another option to turn that button off. Convenient, because many users often open the assistant by accident. On the Note 9 there was no possibility to disable the button at the release; with a new update that problem is partly solved.

Partly, because completely disabling Bixby is still not there. On previous Samsung smartphones you could choose the settings to open Bixby with the press of a button, or to not open anything at all, no matter how often you press the button. The Note 9 is the first Samsung smartphone on which you do not just come from Bixby.

Bixby: assistant with limitations

Samsung introduced Bixby in early 2017, along with the  Galaxy S8 . The company sought competition with the Google Assistant and Apple's Siri. The unique thing is that Bixby can be used, among other things, to perform actions in certain apps; you can ask the assistant to order a taxi through the Uber app or send a Samsung app.

In practice, Bixby does not really fulfill that promise. The assistant has poor speech recognition, so that an assignment is often not understood. Bixby is also only available in a handful of languages, including English and Korean. Whether and when a Dutch version appears is unknown. That while the Google Assistant , which is also on the Note 9, works in Dutch.

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