I’ve owned a Samsung phone for a year now and never bothered to give Bixby a try. Bixby is the butt of jokes, and I knew it wouldn’t be any good. Well, what I knew was wrong.
Bixby Is Great at Managing My Smart Home
I have a Samsung phone, fridge, and (most recently) a TV. All three prompt me to connect them to each other using Samsung SmartThings. I finally gave in, and thus, my smart home journey began. I now have a slight fetish for Matter-compatible gadgets.
It was playing with Samsung SmartThings that encouraged me to try out Bixby. Turns out, if I tell Bixby to turn out the lights in my office, that’s faster than opening the app and turning the two Umbra Cono smart lights on my desk off individually. It’s actually faster to ask Bixby to turn my lights off than to reach over and tap their power buttons by hand!
Nanoleaf Umbra Cono
The Cono has a playful design that allows you to direct light by positioning it upright, on its side, or upside down for a hint of illumination. It’s unique leg design doubles as a handle so you can comfortably use it like a torch. Create the perfect ambiance wherever you might go.
I can tell Bixby to turn on my TV and open Netflix. I can also ask Bixby to confirm if my fridge door is closed after I’ve heard one of my kids sneak off to get something to drink.
A Fast Way to Navigate Phone Settings
I love the flexibility that Samsung hardware and software offers. I don’t say this because I particularly love the company’s products. There just isn’t any other 3-in-1 consumer device quite like the Galaxy Z Fold. Likewise, no other phone maker gives you the ability to configure so much without installing a custom ROM, as Samsung does.
The downside is that Samsung’s settings can be tedious to navigate. While the layout makes sense, it can still be a challenge to remember what something is called and where it’s located. I’ve come to find that it’s easier to ask Bixby how to do it instead.
Even when I know exactly what a feature is called and where to go, it’s still faster to ask Bixby to take me directly to the page. Saves me four extra taps.
Let Bixby Handle the Mundane
I’m late to the game when it comes to voice assistants in large part because I’ve never seen the appeal of asking a cylinder on my counter what the weather is or for it to provide me random facts about celebrities.
I’ve come to find that voice assistants are most helpful for me in doing the mundane. Asking Bixby to set a timer for 10 minutes saves me several swipes on my watch.
Bixby can turn on my phone’s flashlight when I’m outside wearing gloves in the dark. If I need to remember to do something an hour from now, Bixby can create the reminder.
And yes, it turns out asking Bixby the weather is convenient, after all.
Opening Apps Faster Than By Hand
The older I get, the less interest I have in interacting with my devices. Don’t get me wrong, I still love tinkering with stuff. I’m a gadget nerd. But once I figure out how I want things to be, the less I have to interact with them to get them to do what I want, the better.
I don’t want to open an app launcher and navigate to the app I’m looking for. I prefer to hit a shortcut, type out the app’s name, and launch the app that way. It’s less distracting.
Turns out, asking Bixby to launch apps breaks my focus even less, since I don’t see any app icons at any point in the process. As someone who recently started auto-hiding my taskbar so that I can keep my focus exclusively on my open apps, this appeals to me. I should point out here that I use Samsung DeX in place of a PC. Bixby is the voice assistant integrated directly into my desktop.
Bixby Makes for a Decent Secretary
It’s easy to forget that smartphones, at their core, are for placing phone calls. By extension, voice assistants built around phones need to be pretty good at managing the phone bits. Bixby makes for a helpful secretary, able to quickly place a call on my behalf or show me my recent missed calls.
I can tell Bixby to show me info for a specific contact, and it will surface that information, saving me from digging through the contacts apps.
Sadly, one casualty of Samsung Messages dying in favor of Google Messages is that Bixby has lost similar integration with text messaging. As convenient as it would be, I’m not willing to give up secure messaging and go back to SMS in order to manage texts with Bixby.
Are other voice assistants better? Quite frankly, Bixby is easy for me to pull up through my Galaxy Z Fold 6 or my Galaxy Watch 6, understands my voice and responds quickly. I haven’t had any reason to investigate the others.
Not that I need to do much investigating. I don’t own any Apple hardware, so Siri is inaccessible. I have no desire to feed Amazon any more data about me. I’m not a fan of Google services generally, so its various cloud integrations are more off-putting than helpful.
Meanwhile, Bixby integrates with the various Samsung apps that I already love. For me, Bixby really is the best option of the lot.
