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Samsung Blocks Ability To Remap Galaxy S8's Bixby Button (zdnet.com) 119

Posted by BeauHD from the where-there's-a-will-there's-a-way dept.
A Samsung representative confirmed today via Twitter that the company has blocked the ability for users to remap the Bixby hardware button on the Galaxy S8. For soon-to-be Galaxy S8 owners, the news will come as a disappointment, especially since the Bixby voice assistant in English has been delayed and will not be fully functional when units starting shipping later this week. ZDNet reports: XDA Developers first reported a Galaxy S8 firmware update blocked the ability to remap the button to perform a variety of tasks. Before, the button could even be remapped to launch Google Assistant. It's not clear if Samsung will ever support remapping the button. A representative for Samsung tweeted: "Can't say it will never happen, but we won't officially support."
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Samsung Blocks Ability To Remap Galaxy S8's Bixby Button More

Samsung Blocks Ability To Remap Galaxy S8's Bixby Button

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  • where's the PC of Mobile Computing? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17, 2017 @07:13PM (#54252953)

    These things are computers; where is the PC of mobile computing?

    We need the freedom to program these things as we, the users, see fit. When will we finally have our freedom again?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by fustakrakich ( 1673220 )

      When will we finally have our freedom again?

      When there's sufficient demand.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        When there's sufficient demand.

        Exactly that. I've had this talk with many friends and they simply cannot see any need to control their own devices. In fact they prefer not to, because then someone "takes care of it" and you don't need to think. As long as they can get to Facebook they are happy.

        There is little to no market demand for devices that are controlled by their users. The open PC was a historical accident. I do not think it will happen again.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

        When we have passed the "Max Headroom" world we live in today.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • >>"These things are computers; where is the PC of mobile computing?"

        >"Nexus and Pixel phones."

        I think it kinda died with the Nexus 5 if the comparison is openness AND great value. And now Nexus is completely gone, replaced with Pixel which is just as expensive as all the other phones out there.... although at least more open.

    • We were well on our way towards getting it until Microsoft decided to kill off Windows Mobile for a replacement that was inferior to, and 2+ years behind, every other mobile platform at the time (instead of 5+ years ahead).

      If "Windows Phone" (a/k/a Danger Sidekick OS, ported to C# & dotnet compact framework) had never existed & Samsung's latest & greatest phone today ran Hypothetical Windows Mobile 14 instead, upgrading your old Hypothetical WinMo 12 device to WinMo 14 would be like upgrading an

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

        You never tried to develop for Windows Mobile.

        I tried, and I found that there were a lot of API calls that weren't implemented in the OS - for stuff that I needed. I had to get people to implement an alternative solution on the devices to solve the problem that had to be solved - added cost for the project just because Microsoft provided an empty shell of an OS.

        So Windows Mobile 6.x was mostly a flashy shell. The light was on but nobody was home in that platform. So the result was that it was hard to make a

        • Actually, I developed software for Windows Mobile for work back around 2006-2008. ;-)

          One feature I really, really miss from dotnetCF -- it didn't force you to bend over backwards and write explicitly-asynchronous code when you were trying to implement some blatantly-linear activity (like "display a form on the screen", "submit its contents to a server and wait for the response", "deal with its response", "display the next form", "submit its contents to a server and wait for the response", and so on). You co

    • This time around, I think the big players learned their lesson. Keep the stuff under wraps, freedom is not profitable, restrictions are. It's annoying.

      There is no reason we don't have decent GP mobile computer that's not tethered to a manufacturer and/or carrier. I mean no reason technologically. So the big players are probably actively quashing any attempts to bring something game changing to market, because they like the game exactly as it is.

      Meanwhile, Microsoft and Intel are slowly but surely linkin

  • I'm upgrading soon from an S5 - I wonder if I should get a 7 while I still can and then wait to see what they do next instead of getting the 8.

  • No reason.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DiSKiLLeR ( 17651 ) on Monday April 17, 2017 @07:24PM (#54253019) Homepage Journal

    No reason to ever buy a Galaxy S8, then.

    Fuck that shit.

    • Re:No reason.. (Score:4)

      by ITRambo ( 1467509 ) on Monday April 17, 2017 @07:28PM (#54253043)
      You get my non-existent mod point. People need to stay away from things that allow them to do what they want to do with it. How many people would actually bother to make the change? Why is Samsung scared of the possibility? It's annoying.

      • Re:No reason.. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by markdavis ( 642305 ) on Monday April 17, 2017 @07:37PM (#54253081)

        >"Why is Samsung scared of the possibility? It's annoying."

        Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It is almost irresistible for companies to gain the power to force their agenda on people and then NOT use that power. The only thing that keeps it in check is severe customer backlash (which rarely happens) and hacking (which the companies try to fight endlessly). Samsung is probably no worse than any other typical company. Google is certainly not immune to it- they have all kinds of artificial limitations in Android that favor their own agendas, too. Crap, even their web search page is full of it ("Oh, I see you are not using us as your default search engine." "Oh, I see you are not using Chrome..." dismiss it as much as you like, it will come right back next time or perhaps next week). As does Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, etc, etc.

      • Why is Samsung scared of the possibility?

        One of the highlights of the computing world in the turn of the century was the emergence of the single experience. Apple showed that you can make stupid amounts of money by creating a single standardized and very tightly controlled experience without providing users any customisation options at all. The idea is you pick up any iPhone you can use it, you pick up any Mac you can use it.

        Microsoft and mobile phone vendors have been falling over themselves to replicate this model for many years, locking down th

        • Windows 10 has nearly realized it. The installation media is now, roughly speaking, a system image much like a ROM file for Andriod. That is, the image is applied and obliterates the previous one to achieve a simple install/upgrade mechanism that ensures settings and whatnot are forced to known good states upon upgrade.

          Observe how certain Windows 10 settings are obliterated after certain large updates such as Creators Edition. Have fun turning all the privacy options back on and redoing any anti-auto-upd

      • Totally agree.

        The trick is knowing this before you buy... something like this may be pretty obvious to geeks on a technology-oriented forum, but my guess is that the great majority of users won't really pay attention/ notice, and others won't notice till after the fact.

        Personally, I never use the voice search features (Siri, Cortana, whatever this one is) ... I think it's probably because I've been "into computers" for so long that my experiences with speech to text have been colored by years of high promis

    • Re:No reason.. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Tough Love ( 215404 ) on Monday April 17, 2017 @08:20PM (#54253323)

      Fuck that shit.

      Seconded. But this blunder is easy to undo, and Samsung has a history of responding correctly to criticism. In their own interest obviously, but just a little less arrogant than a couple of Silicon Valley operations I could mention. An example: correctly chose not to follow (courageously!) in Apple's footsteps re the stereo jack. Another example: the sdcard slot stayed. Well, we never got the removable battery back, but I understand why... just so long as it stays repairable as opposed to glued in so insanely that replacing the battery amounts to refurbishing. I will predict that, with widespread condemnation of this stupid, arrogant infringement of the right to use the thing you bought, Samsung will back down and do the right thing.

      Should they wisely see the light and do the right thing, I would say that on the whole Samsung will gain trust compared to this incident never having happened. On the other hand, if they stick to their guns on this, that that's enough to flip me. In that case, fuck that shit, there are lots of good Android phones out there, and I will pick one that does not wave an attractive feature in my face then take it away.

      • But this blunder is easy to undo, and Samsung has a history of responding correctly to criticism.

        We'll see how much of this criticism is real. I'll wager that people won't care less about this button. Heck I didn't even bother remapping the assistant from my previous phone. That didn't stop me using another assistant using one of the many ways that's more useful than having to push a button.

      • Well, we never got the removable battery back, but I understand why... just so long as it stays repairable as opposed to glued in so insanely that replacing the battery amounts to refurbishing.

        What explanation is it that you've understood? It enables more fancy unibody design and exotic materials? Who the fuck cares about that?!

        • If you do not care about unibody design then feel free to drive one of those old cars that had frames and tended to kill you more. And if you can't see how that relates to handset design then just don't worry, be happy.

          • Sure, car frames and phones are completely comparable.

            One is a transportation device which propels the occupants at high speed and the other an electronic device which propels user data at high speed to the data mongers in S.V. Obviously, a unibody design on your phone will protect the occupants from injury when its involved in a high speed collision.

            Oh wait, that's not right. The unibody design will prevent user servicing of things like batteries or replacing broken parts. But hey, at Apple has their "r

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by merky1 ( 83978 )

      Future Samsung press release : The lagging S8 sales are obviously from the Note 7 debacle, and we need to reduce user functionality to only samsung approved software and functions. It's for your safety.

    • No reason to ever buy a Galaxy S8, then.

      If your entire purchasing decision for a phone hangs on the ability to customise a single button then your priorities are somewhat skewed.

  • ...and their comment was certainly snarky; but...

    WHAT IS UP WITH YOU PEOPLE?!?!?

    Do you whine that you can't reprogram the Play and Stop buttons on your DVD Player?

    Do you whine that you can't make the Stop button on you microwave oven launch Spotify?

    Just because something has a microcontroller doesn't make it a general purpose computer.

    It's an EMBEDDED DEVICE, get the fuck over it.

    • Re: I can't believe I'm defending Samsung... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The problem was they could reprogram it but the devs BLOCKED it just to be asses.

    • Is there some sort of rule that vendor hostility becomes more acceptable as devices become smaller?

      If the vendor specifically has to break the ability to remap a button; this fairly strongly implies that it was otherwise possible; and the only reason it is impossible now is because they don't want it to happen.

      People tend not to feel the same way about fixed-function buttons in weaker devices because the limitations are more architectural than deliberate(and, if only thanks to a couple of decades of co

      • thanks to a couple of decades of convergent evolution, there is often a reasonably sane quasi-default layout.

        Actually, the default for DVR is insane. There is no good reason to have a stop button right next to play/pause when you almost never want that. Just lose the stop button. I mean, what does it do that pause, eject and power don't already cover? Or at least, place it well away from the useful buttons.

        • thanks to a couple of decades of convergent evolution, there is often a reasonably sane quasi-default layout.

          Actually, the default for DVR is insane. There is no good reason to have a stop button right next to play/pause when you almost never want that. Just lose the stop button. I mean, what does it do that pause, eject and power don't already cover? Or at least, place it well away from the useful buttons.

          ...and we're immediately off-topic. Good job!

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        They can do whatever they want with the product they build, if you don't like it then don't buy it.

        Small wonder there is a slow pileup of failed "open" smartphone endeavours, you're all just going to keep buying Samsung's products anyway, sure you'll whine that the newly introduced dedicated hardware button can't be reprogrammed but it's not that big of a deal and as that time passes Samsung gets further and further ahead and open/free alternatives become less and less of a possibility.

        Your freedoms are slo

      • Is there some sort of rule that vendor hostility becomes more acceptable as devices become smaller?

        If the vendor specifically has to break the ability to remap a button; this fairly strongly implies that it was otherwise possible; and the only reason it is impossible now is because they don't want it to happen.

        People tend not to feel the same way about fixed-function buttons in weaker devices because the limitations are more architectural than deliberate(and, if only thanks to a couple of decades of convergent evolution, there is often a reasonably sane quasi-default layout).

        That's a very weak excuse.

    • Re:I can't believe I'm defending Samsung... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Tough Love ( 215404 ) on Monday April 17, 2017 @08:22PM (#54253331)

      Do you [complain] that you can't reprogram the Play and Stop buttons on your DVD Player?

      Why, yes I do. Next question.

      • GP doesn't, because Apple does his thinking for him.

        Not only are they geniuses, they have proxy-geniuses located in retail outlets right near your home.

        • GP doesn't, because Apple does his thinking for him.

          Not only are they geniuses, they have proxy-geniuses located in retail outlets right near your home.

          Bullshit. I'm and Embedded Developer. I know how easy it would be to allow User-Programmability for that (or any) Button.

          But it isn't always NECESSARY or even DESIRABLE. And that's the difference.

    • At least pick realistic examples. The buttons on my DVD player (or Blu Ray) are probably on a good place. Besides I'd be using a remote control and almost never use them. I'd love a remote that I could move the buttons around or at least reassign them. There are remotes that have screens and you can do that but then you lose the tactile touch that lets you use the remote without taking your eyes off the screen.

      When it comes to assigning a button to a service that not everyone will use then it's a waste of

      • I'd love a remote that I could move the buttons around or at least reassign them.

        Steve Wozniak invented one back in about 1985. Didn't sell very well, unfortunately.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        And today's smartphones are general purpose computers.

        For VERY limited values of the Term "General Purpose".

        As I said; just because it has a Microprocessor/Microcontroller, DOESN'T make it a General Purpose Computer, sorry.

        • Oh please, there isn't much that I can do on a computer that I can't do on a smartphone. I can run word processors, create spreadsheets, browse the web, play games, and much, much more. Smart phones are more limited in their connectivity to peripherals like printers and scanners though it's getting better. If my smart phone doesn't have the ability to do something then I can probably write an application to do that. In fact that's the definition of a general purpose computer.

    • Years ago I had a Motorola K1. It's a little flip phone that could (in theory) connect to the Internet via a dialup connection. Because Motorola wanted to push all that crappy dialup stuff, they put a whole button (on a crowded keypad) for getting onto the Internet. It was so absurdly slow to load the browser, much less dialling up that I found it easier to go online in other ways than to ever use it. Some of the other buttons could be remapped - but not that one. Shame, I could have used that real-estate t

      • Years ago I had a Motorola K1. It's a little flip phone that could (in theory) connect to the Internet via a dialup connection. Because Motorola wanted to push all that crappy dialup stuff, they put a whole button (on a crowded keypad) for getting onto the Internet. It was so absurdly slow to load the browser, much less dialling up that I found it easier to go online in other ways than to ever use it. Some of the other buttons could be remapped - but not that one. Shame, I could have used that real-estate to do something useful.

        I still have that phone - I use it as an alarm clock. I've remapped all the keys to make it as 'fat finger friendly' as possible, but even though it's in aircraft mode, and had a dead sim in it, one little press of that button still tries to load up the browser. It still annoys me some 10 years after they came out with that phone.

        ...and your point being?

    • Relax, buddy. We are breaking Samsung's balls because they are a bunch of assholes and because it is fun to stick to the man - especially when the man is a complete asshole.

      • Relax, buddy. We are breaking Samsung's balls because they are a bunch of assholes and because it is fun to stick to the man - especially when the man is a complete asshole.

        Well, you'll have no argument from me, there, LOL!

  • Flash another ROM (Score:2, Insightful)

    by FrankHaynes ( 467244 )

    So just flash another ROM into the phone and do what you want with it. How hard is that?

    • Re:Flash another ROM (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Xenx ( 2211586 ) on Monday April 17, 2017 @07:47PM (#54253159)
      Considering most people purchase their phones from a locked carrier, kinda hard.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        I'm not sure where you checked on the XDA forums, but it obviously wasn't the dedicated sections for the Galaxy S4 which is filled with custom roms, for several different variants of the S4:

        https://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-s4

        My wife's S4 has run Cyanogenmod for years, and now runs LinageOS.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by JustNiz ( 692889 )

        Yeah I totally wish I'd never given my S3 to my sister.

    • if you can find a ROM that supports the S8's radio. WiFi, hardware accelerated graphics, GPS, etc, etc. Difficultly: The S8 Just launched.

      Phones aren't like windows PCs. You can't just go to Samsung's website and pull drivers down. For a flagship like the S8 you probably will be able to find a ROM before long though. Try that with a cheaper phone like an LG D415 or Blu R1 HD...

    • Especially with Samsung's later phones, even if it doesn't "legally" void the warranty, it blows the fuse bits in the "Knox' subsystems, and after that not only do they consider the warranty void; the phone will no longer complete some secure transactions like Samsung Pay, and a few other things get disabled IIRC.

      So, rooting one kind of cripples it from being a "normal" Samsung phone in that its trust chain is no longer intact even if the warranty thing isn't an issue.

  • Screw the Corporate Overlords! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jediborg ( 4808835 ) on Monday April 17, 2017 @07:49PM (#54253169)
    This is why i won't buy a locked-down smartphone running Android anymore. These are designed to obey their creators, not their masters, which should rightfully be the users.

    The quickening pace at which we are losing control over our own devices that we presumably own is frightening

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The quickening pace at which we are losing control over our own devices that we presumably own is frightening

      To you.

      To me, too.

      But not to most, which is why consumers continue to buy the devices no matter how much c ontrol over them they lose.

  • Guess someone was able to remap the Bixby button on demo S8 unit in Best Buy. So it isn't that Samsung blocked it from the beginning , they explicitly removed right before launch which is d-bag move.

    http://www.androidauthority.co... [androidauthority.com]

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