At this point, the saga of Bixby has gone on for a while. To recap, Bixby was launched alongside the Galaxy S8 and S8+ on March 29, 2017. The virtual assistant was given great prominence, to the extent that there was a dedicated hardware button to access it on the Galaxy S8/S8+ (and which was also later included with the Galaxy Note 8). Samsung heavily promoted the assistant, but at that time, major features such as Bixby Voice weren't even ready and the enthusiast community was immediately interested in being able to remap or disable the button.
Then, a game of cat and mouse began with the development community and Samsung, as the development community released methods and apps to remap the Bixby button, and then Samsung kept sending OTA updates which would disable the ability to remap the button again. This went on for months, and consumers suffered in the cross-fire as many users were simply not interested in having a hardware button to launch the assistant. This was because it could be launched accidentally at any time and it would wake up the device, which got annoying quickly.
In September, Samsung sent an update which allowed users to disable the Bixby button. However, it wasn't very thorough, as the hardware button wasn't completely killed. Even if a user disabled the assistant, he could press the button and it would do its job of waking up the device, even though it would no longer open the Bixby application.
This meant that users could still accidentally wake their devices by pressing the button, even though the functionality of the assistant was disabled. The solution was lacking, and users were hoping for more. Today, Samsung has finally delivered on the original promise, as the company is now rolling out a new update for Bixby for the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy Note 8. The new update completely kills the hardware button if it is disabled, to the point where it will no longer wake up the device when it is pressed.
According to Sammobile, Samsung has also updated the Bixby service that analyses saved contacts when a call command is issued to Bixby. To update the assistant to the latest version, users can open Galaxy Apps on the Galaxy S8/S8+/Note 8, then tap the three-dot button on the top right, tap 'My apps', followed by 'Update', and finally the 'Update all' button.
In recent months, Samsung has been working on improving the user experience of the virtual assistant. Last month, Bixby 2.0 was launched with third-party developer support, and the Bixby Voice feature has recently gone live in 200 countries and territories.
What has your experience been with Bixby and its hardware button? Have you been waiting for the update to completely kill it? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.