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My Bixby Level Service

InfernalByte

InfernalByte

Android Expert
What the hell is My Bixby Level Service? I remember being bothered by it a few times but it wasn't clear what it was. Stupid Service.
 
i have the Bixby button on my S8+...

i dont have the desired level of interest.. to set it up.. and learn..
 
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The_Chief:
It is being replaced with Bixby 2.0, which is supposed to work better and do more. We'll see who's closer to the truth!

Well Chiefy, bixby has to get better. It can't really get any worse, can it? I will be the first to admit, there are many people who wrote bixby off without giving it a chance. People thinking bixby is nothing more than a shoddily produced Google Assistant clone. People who wrote it off, believing the incorrect reviews of reviewers who misspoke about bixby's capabilities. I am not one of them. bixby is different than other digital assistants, I give the Samsung kudos for having the foresight, the vision to take their digital assistant in a different direction. And even if bixby was nothing more than just another Google assistant want to be, what's wrong with a little competition? What's wrong with forcing your competitor to better their product?

I personally do not have any issues with the Samsungs creation of bixby, my problem lies with its implementation. When bixby was first released it was so half baked, it was practically raw. It was poorly executed. They should have waited until the release of the S9 and S9+ to unleash bixby. After all the bugs had been ironed out.

When I got the S8, I set up bixby, keep in mind bixby voice was not part of the package. There was bixby home, vision and reminders. bixby home was just awful. It did not provide a single piece of useful information. Pretty much anything it does, Google Now does better, personal preference I know. But like I said before, of all the cards provided, perhaps 2 of them serve any real purpose. There's the weather, but I'd bet most people have a weather widget/app already, plus Google Now already provides it. There's also Samsung Health, which gives me my step count, which in all honesty, is not something I really need that crucially. Even the Spotify card was defective, it would allow me to play a song, but would not play the next song in my library, but play the next song from the album that song was from even though that song was not in my library.As for the rest of the cards, they are terrible. Again, seriously what in the world id Giphy? Why is this a thing? What knucklehead at the Samsung thought it would be a good idea to put it on my homescreen? Samsung themes are lame, and even if a few are good, it's not something I need instantaneous access to. The alarm card was useless, I had to actually set the alarm through the clock app, and it could not even be edited once it was set through the card. So what's the point of it?

I thought that bixby was supposed to learn my habits? Provide me with useful info throughout my day. I did not. Unless you count when it told me; Hey, you contacted this one person once at this time, do you want to contact them everyday at this time, for the rest of your days here on Earth? It did not take very long for me to tire of this.

The vision part of bixby was also a colossal failure. It never identified anything I showed it correctly. Now, the first few things I showed bixby were industry specific to my job. I did not think bixby would get any of them, but I was hoping to be pleasantly surprised. I was not. Then I showed bixby common everyday items, not once did it get it right. I showed it a Dell computer, with Dell clear as day. bixby said it was a tower fan. So then I showed it a box fan, bixby had no idea what it was. A can of soda with the name brand front and center? You guessed it, bixby was lost, yet again. The original Dell, that was a tower fan, the second time around was now a router.

Never really gave the reminder function any thought. I've been using my alarms to remind me to do stuff for years. i never understood why this is a thing. Need to get milk after work set alarm called Get Milk, set it for when I leave work. Has never failed me.

By the time the voice portion was released, I was finished with bixby, even after watching several reviews of those that were wowed by it. So I downloaded a disabler and forgot about bixby. But I thought, how can you be so adamant about it without using it. So I reenabled it, went through the set up process, only to be severely underwhelmed. It rarely responded to my voice. There was almost always some issue. I went into settings and retrained the voice recognition, over and over again. The results were the same. I even tried a few quick commands, but it would either not recognize my voice password and I had to do it manually, or it would tell me it could not complete the quick command at this time.

I watched several videos on Youtube about the "usefulness" of quick commands, but truthfully my life is not that complicated. Like I said before, bixby is just a solution to a problem I just do not have. I don't use any digital assistant. I am not just biased against bixby. Digital assistants do not really help me in any way. There is nothing that they do that is really useful. Sure, they might shave a few seconds here or there, but to me it is not enough to use them. Are they the future? Yes, absolutely. But they are not really ready for the prime time in my opinion. Or maybe, the prime time is not ready for them just yet. As the smart home becomes more widespread their usefulness will undoubtedly increase. But for me, it just not there yet.
 
After seeing what's coming with Bixby 2.0, its ability to have contextual conversations with you and do what you want without using any other apps, have you reconsidered your position on it?
 
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The_Chief:
After seeing what's coming with Bixby 2.0, its ability to have contextual conversations with you and do what you want without using any other apps, have you reconsidered your position on it?

No. It still doesn't offer me anything that's really time saving. But the same thing goes for all digital assistants. As I have said before, they are a solution to a problem that I just don't have.
 
The_Chief said:
Do you have a smart garage door opener?
Click to expand...

I have a regular garage door opener but I bought a MyQ hub that connects it to my home wifi and then wrote a skill for Alexa to connect to it.So I can open and close my garage door pretty much from anywhere in my house via Alexa as well as via the myQ app anywhere else and I get an alert on my phone any time it goes up or down outside of my designated acceptable times so I always know whether it is open or closed. I disabled the outside keypad as someone was trying to guess the code and now they can "guess" to their heart's content. :D
 
Bixby 2.0 on the Galaxy Note 9:

I don't know how Samsung did it, but they accomplished what was thought to be impossible - they made Bixby even worse.

While Bixby 2.0 has contextual conversations, it's extremely limited in what it can do - and even more limited in what it can understand. Plus, there are NO settings - NONE!

I thought (foolishly) that maybe they moved the settings to improve accuracy to Bixby voice itself. So I asked, "how can you improve your accuracy?" I got this response:

Bixby2.jpg
 
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