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

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."

Comments

User Choice

[Anonymous Coward]

Is dead.

If the trend continues, we'll be required to send top corporations monthly payments to not break our legs.

Re:User Choice

[davester666]

You are mistaken. The monthly payments are necessary in order to keep your legs nice and healthy. The corporations can't be held responsible if you stop paying and something just happens to occur...

Re:User Choice

[Meski]

Nice legs you have. You wouldn't want something bad to happen to them, right?

where's the PC of Mobile Computing?

[Anonymous Coward]

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:where's the PC of Mobile Computing?

[fustakrakich]

When will we finally have our freedom again?

When there's sufficient demand.

Re:where's the PC of Mobile Computing?

[toadlife]

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

Nexus and Pixel phones.

Re:where's the PC of Mobile Computing?

[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:where's the PC of Mobile Computing?

[markdavis]

>>"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.

Re: where's the PC of Mobile Computing?

[Miamicanes]

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 older PC or laptop to a newer version of Windows... some new driver .dll files copied from a newer phone (or generic reference drivers downloaded from Qualcomm or Nvidia), and you'd be set.

WinMo 5 & 6 were ugly as sin out of the box, but the core OS itself was generally good, and had capabilities that were YEARS ahead of anything about to be released by Apple or Google. That's a big part of the reason why Microsoft makes about ~$14 in royalties for every new Android & Apple device sold... Android might have made the technology pretty, and Apple might have made it usable by nontechnical people, but MICROSOFT was the one who first delivered it as a working product to YEARS before an iPhone or Android was even a "thing".

RIP Windows Mobile.

Re:where's the PC of Mobile Computing?

[duke_cheetah2003]

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 linking our PC's to themselves so they can eventually start tightening the screws. Windows Cloud is a sneak peak of the world in Microsoft's long-dreamed of Walled Garden that Apple has enjoyed for so long.

Someone else in this thread said 'When there's sufficient demand." but what I think they are missing, is the big players are actively taking steps to ensure that demand is insignificant. What they are doing is creating more demand for the restrictive products because most people just don't give a hoot, if it works they're happy.

One piece of good news in it all.. the DIY SOC offerings are getting smaller and more powerful with every iteration. These seem like good GP computing platforms in a small package with no bullshit (they seem to mostly run Linux, totally open specs.) So there's that at least. Frankly all they're missing is the cellular modem and some form of portable small display.

Re:where's the PC of Mobile Computing?

[Z00L00K]

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

Re: where's the PC of Mobile Computing?

[Z00L00K]

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 anything useful on that platform. So no good apps means that it wasn't attractive on the market.

Re:where's the PC of Mobile Computing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google just killed them too with the forced spyware installations. On early Nexus versions one could at least remove the unnecessary software, but that was against Googles do-evil plan.

Re: where's the PC of Mobile Computing?

[Miamicanes]

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 could literally just wrap it in a dotnetCF class that allowed you to write it as a faux single-threaded sequential task, and let dotnetCF itself do the UI thread-juggling for you. It wasn't the OPTIMAL way to write an app like that, but it made implementing a simple sequence of submitted forms absurdly easy to do. I wrote my first server-submitting dotnetCF app in about 3 hours (most of which was spent reading a few chapters of a book)... I think my first Android app that did something comparable took the better part of a week to write. It amazed me how complicated Android managed to make things that were absolutely TRIVIAL to do with Windows Mobile.

The biggest single weakness of WinMo was the fact that it was LITERALLY impossible to develop a custom WinMo 5 or 6 "phone/dialer app" using dotnet compact framework... you could only do it in C, using (semi-)private APIs with minimal documentation and no example code to speak of. But from what I recall, that was actually one of the new features that were supposed to be in Windows Mobile 7.0 (before Microsoft abandoned it).

Re:where's the PC of Mobile Computing?

[Anonymous Coward]

>>"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.

Well 'great value' wasn't brought up, so you're just moving goalposts.

Re:where's the PC of Mobile Computing?

[markdavis]

>Well 'great value' wasn't brought up, so you're just moving goalposts.

Yes it was brought up when they said "the PC of mobile computing" which, to me, implied compatibility, standardization, and low price due to lots of competition.

Re:where's the PC of Mobile Computing?

[toadlife]

Please elaborate. I have ability to unlock the bootloader on my Nexus 5x and install another ROM if I so choose. Short of that I can also root my existing ROM without needing an exploit and modify the stock system.

HULK REALLY MAD!

[Anonymous Coward]

Samsung bad!
Hulk kill!

Re:HULK REALLY MAD!

[colinrichardday]

Perhaps that's why they disabled the Bixby button.

Re:HULK REALLY MAD!

[Z00L00K]

Do they have approval from the Bixby family to use that designation?

Also the Hulk reference to the Bixby button is closer than you may first guess, Bill Bixby was one actor in the TV series The Incredible Hulk.

Push the Bixby button - get Lou Ferrigno to show up in green.

Re:HULK REALLY MAD!

[colinrichardday]

Oh, I was aware that Bill Bixby played David Banner on that show. Thanks for getting it.

Perhaps an S7?

[mhkohne]

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.

Re: Perhaps an S7?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you could, you know, try something other than a Samsung. You're buying a vaguely rectangular device with Android on it, why not try something like a OnePlus 3T?

Re: Perhaps an S7?

[youngone]

I'm upgrading soon from an S5 - I wonder if I should get a 7 while I still can...

I'm going to upgrade from an S4 and will get an S7 for something like $250* less than the current retail price in 6 weeks or so.

why not try something like a OnePlus 3T?

I won't buy a phone without a microsd card slot, but other than that they look like a really good phone at a good price. If they offer a model with external storage the next time I'm in the market, I will consider them.

* Local money, not $US

Re: Perhaps an S7?

[Dorianny]

why not try something like a OnePlus 3T?

I won't buy a phone without a microsd card slot, but other than that they look like a really good phone at a good price. If they offer a model with external storage the next time I'm in the market, I will consider them.

* Local money, not $US

He suggested you look at "something like a OnePlus 3T" not just the 3T model or OnePlus . There are dozens of Android vendors and models with about every combination of specs and features one might want. It would serve you well to at least glance over whats out there instead of blindly picking up another Galaxy version

Re: Perhaps an S7?

[youngone]

K, thanks.

Re: Perhaps an S7?

[Cmdln Daco]

In modern horror movies, the zombies moan 'flagship' where they used to moan 'brains.'

Re:Perhaps an S7?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

This is really the issue, people continue to give money to companies that do shitty things like this instead of funding the efforts toward openness.

Re: Perhaps an S7?

[Z00L00K]

I got a CAT S60 last time. Only bad thing on that device is the cameras, otherwise it seems to do what it promises. It do have an IR camera, but (un)fortunately the images are quite fuzzy. They are probably intentionally fuzzy to prevent military applications and revealing nudes.

Re: Perhaps an S7?

[oobayly]

Out of sheer curiosity, why is an SD card so important? What sort of data do you carry around on your phone that 64GB isn't enough.

I carry around a 64GB usb drive on my keyring, it contains a bootable Linux image, PuTTy a keepass file and some ssh keys. The rest (the vast majority) is zeroes.

Re: Perhaps an S7?

[yuriklastalov]

Not only are most phones not 64GB, when that is an option it's a damn costly one. I'd rather use my cheap as dirt MicroSD than shell out an extra $300 for more built-in storage because some hipster retards at the handset maker felt it necessary to make the shell un-openable because of "muh industrial design".

Re:Perhaps an S7?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Huh... I just bought another (new in box, from amazon) S5. I saw no reason to upgrade right now.

Once some of the new spectrum (in the USA) is supported I may want a newer phone to take advantage of it, but for now I don't see anything compelling about the newer phones.

Re: Perhaps an S7?

[Anonymous Coward]

I like that OnePlus has SD and capacitive buttons (requirements for me). But it does not have removable battery, also a requirement for me. Perhaps the OP has similar/changing requirements.

No reason..

[DiSKiLLeR]

No reason to ever buy a Galaxy S8, then.

Fuck that shit.

Re:No reason..

[ITRambo]

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..

[markdavis]

>"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.

Re:No reason..

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? You're not going to buy a product because it doesn't have a feature that it never had in the first place? OK.

Re:No reason..

[Tough Love]

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.

Re:No reason..

[Anonymous Coward]

If this is why you wouldn't by an S8, then you were never going to buy an S8.

Re:No reason..

[merky1]

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.

Re:No reason..

[thegarbz]

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.

Re:No reason..

[thegarbz]

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 the ability to customise, move around, or change the UI for the most part almost down to even locking down colour schemes. We see this in OSes, mobile phones, hardware, distribution platforms, software, web interfaces, etc.

If I boycotted anything that wasn't following this trend I would only be buying RMS approved hardware running RMS approved software.

Re:No reason..

[thegarbz]

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.

Re:No reason..

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also the reason that I started avoiding Samsung phones a few years ago, just tired of their parallel ecosystem stuff, endlessly trying to get me to sign up for a Samsung account and use 'special' Samsung apps that duplicated functionality that was already there.

Re: No reason..

[Anonymous Coward]

You are free to sulk in a corner. Meanwhile in the Real World, Real People have other priorities. Our lives do not revolve around stupid machines, you know. :)

Re:No reason..

[yuriklastalov]

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-update tricks again after updating.

Which reminds me, with forced auto-updates, automatic restarts regardless of what the computer may be doing, and forced setting changes upon update, why, it's almost like it's Microsoft's computer rather than your own. This is entirely by design.

Re:No reason..

[yuriklastalov]

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?!

Re:No reason..

[Anonymous Coward]

You worry about the Samsung account? Consider worrying about having a google account forced upon you.

I have an account with my mobile phone company. (They gave me a telephone number in exchange for money.) That should be all I need to use a mobile phone. I may also want to connect my smartphone to various wifi networks and some mail servers - but not how a google account is not needed for any of that.

I could opt out of the facebook account, apparently they believe that some customers don't use facebook. But now I have a forced google account that I don't use. I won't ever use gmail, I don't accept that the "price" for usage is that google analyzes my messages. So I did not set up any forwarding of that mail - but people find the account through google searches and send me mail that I am never going to see. Their loss, and google is looking really stupid here.

I don't mind that they offer a package with gmail and all. But the way you need to get an account just to use the phone is outright silly. Let me use it freely with the limitations that come with not storing anything at google. My contact list is managed at work anyway - I don't need google's services.

Re:No reason..

[DigitalSorceress]

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 promise and low result... and so even though it's likely a lot better now, I'm too busy shouting for the kids to get off my lawn. :)

Re:No reason..

[Tough Love]

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.

Re:No reason..

[yuriklastalov]

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 "recycling" program so you can feel good about replacing an otherwise working device with whatever the new shiny is this month. Let's applaud Apple for saving the planet, one planned obsolescent device at a time!

I can't believe I'm defending Samsung...

[TheFakeTimCook]

...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...

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:I can't believe I'm defending Samsung...

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be new here.

Re:I can't believe I'm defending Samsung...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

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).

Re:I can't believe I'm defending Samsung...

[Tough Love]

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

Why, yes I do. Next question.

Re:I can't believe I'm defending Samsung...

[Tough Love]

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.

Re:I can't believe I'm defending Samsung...

[Cmdln Daco]

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.

Re:I can't believe I'm defending Samsung...

[CanadianMacFan]

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 space. Not everyone uses a voice assistant and those that do don't use the one that Samsung supplies. This is all about Samsung increasing the market share of their voice assistant and not about improving the usability of their phones. The managers and/or marketing people have taken over the decision making, especially since they used to offer the ability of being able to reassign the functionality of the button.

And today's smartphones are general purpose computers.

Re:I can't believe I'm defending Samsung...

[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 slowly eroded by your lack of conviction, proprietary corporate solutions will always rule over the catchup attempts by FOSS to mimic innovation because people just 'want it now!' and aren't willing to sacrifice time or convenience for freedom and nor is FOSS able to innovate and produce things that consumers want before corporate proprietary inventions. Admittedly it does require some level of pragmatism but even RMS is guilty of it, his crusade against Tivoization is a result of accepting Linux as the kernel for the GNU operating system licensed under GPLv2 without copyright assignment to the FSF instead of developing HURD, as a result of this Linux grew in popularity and GNU is effectively stuck with Linux (or the even less desirable -- from their idealistic standpoint -- BSD) and the ideals of its creator(s) and HURD is never going to be able to catch up to Linux. Just as the idea of a free and open PC was never able to catch up to the status quo of proprietary products.

Innovation in bringing PC, smartphone, tablet, wearable, home automation, etc products to market has always come in the form of proprietary solutions from corporations, not from the FOSS community and this is evident in the "where is the FOSS alternative to..." and "can XYZ run Linux" questions that are so often posed.

Re:I can't believe I'm defending Samsung...

[Anonymous Coward]

Samsung isn't stupid, they're sitting around waiting to see if the negative press outweighs the positive reception of Bixby, which they're just trying to give a market chance. So it's our job to generate as much negative press if we don't want the feature. gg /.

A smartphone is a general purpose computer. It has many functions, while a microwave and DVD player have basically one function, so purpose-built buttons make sense for those. But when you have something as powerful and flexible as a smartphone and it only has a few buttons to work with, programmability of those buttons is a must. How would you feel about an F13 key on your keyboard that launches AskJeeves.com and cannot be changed? Would you buy that keyboard? Some people might find it convenient. but most won't.

Just like Samsung Pay, they're not content to sit back and just make hardware and let Google control the OS, launch screen, voice activation, payment, and literally EVERYTHING else that THEIR hardware makes possible. Normally it would be a reprogrammable button but they know everyone would just set it to Google because "fuck that Bixby shit, sounds like ask jeeves, no thanks" and never even give it a chance. Sometimes you have to leverage what you have to get people to look at something new you're making that they don't give a shit about. Microsoft knew this and consciously linked IE to Windows so many times it was getting ridiculous. For like 10 years they kept at it too, so don't expect Samsung to back down easily. Samsung worked hard on their little british baby assistant thing and they want to give it a fighting chance, and it's worth pissing off a few (million? hundred thousand?) customers to get a slice of that sweet sweet voice assistant pie.

Re:I can't believe I'm defending Samsung...

[coofercat]

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.

Re:I can't believe I'm defending Samsung...

[Anonymous Coward]

A dvd player is an embedded device, and so is a 'dumb phone'.

A smarthpone is not an embedded device, it is a general-purpose programmable computer. It comes with some common-case apps (telephony, web browser, maps etc.) but you can add apps for just about anything a general-purpose programmable computer can do.

99% does not need to change the button layout, but that is not a reason to lock it down. It may be reason enough to not provide a settings page for remapping buttons, those few that want a weird remap can take the full burden of writing their own sw for doing it. This should not be prevented though!

My PC can play DVDs also. It has a mute button which is handy. But with the PC being programmable, I can reprogram that button to do something else. Such as launching a word processor or a game. Only a few would bother, but it is useful for them, so Dell does not actively prevent this. Should be the same with any programmable phone.

Re:I can't believe I'm defending Samsung...

[OneHundredAndTen]

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.

Re:I can't believe I'm defending Samsung...

[Anonymous Coward]

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

I don't have a DVD player!

Guess why? Because those things don't do what I want them to do. (ie. play my shit instead of their shit, ignore region codes, and let me skip "nonskippable" stuff)

Re:I can't believe I'm defending Samsung...

[TheFakeTimCook]

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...

[TheFakeTimCook]

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:I can't believe I'm defending Samsung...

[TheFakeTimCook]

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.

Re:I can't believe I'm defending Samsung...

[TheFakeTimCook]

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/...

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.

Re:I can't believe I'm defending Samsung...

[TheFakeTimCook]

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?

Re:I can't believe I'm defending Samsung...

[TheFakeTimCook]

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!

Re:I can't believe I'm defending Samsung...

[CanadianMacFan]

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.

Re:I can't believe I'm defending Samsung...

[Tough Love]

I will have to call that a "whoosh".

Flash another ROM

[FrankHaynes]

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

Re:Flash another ROM

[Xenx]

Considering most people purchase their phones from a locked carrier, kinda hard.

Re: Flash another ROM

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite hard if you want to retain your hardware warranty. Most manufactures don't allow reflashing with a custom ROM without first unlocking the phone, and once unlocked the warranty is considered void.

Re:Flash another ROM

[toadlife]

Samsung locks their bootloaders. In three years of ownership, I was never able to flash a custom ROM on my Galaxy S4, as no one was ever able to crack the bootloader. I just checked on the xda forums. Still not cracked to this day.

So, to answer your question, it's very hard.

Re:Flash another ROM

[Anonymous Coward]

Not all S8/+ variants will be bootloader unlockable. If going by previous phones only the Exynos S8s will have bootloader unlock (which then allows a custom recovery and/or root) while the Qualcomm S8s will almost all be locked. It would take a leaked debug/engineering boot.img to allow root on the bootloader unlockable variants. A escalation exploit of some sort may be possible in the future.. but with Android 7+ and Samsung security, even with just root alone it can be difficult to mod the system partition to allow the Bixby remap mod or whatever else.

tl;dr
Yes, some S8 variants will be able to flash a "ROM" to allow remapping but there will me many variants of the S8 where this won't be possible without help from the community.

Re: Flash another ROM

[Anonymous Coward]

"once unlocked the warranty is considered void"
This is just not true. The manufacturer *may* claim this after the event. Whether or not it is void is a legal grey area.

Re:Flash another ROM

[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: Flash another ROM

[Anonymous Coward]

In many countries like Australia it is not even a legal Grey Area. A manufacturer cannot void a warranty in this way no matter what they say unless they can show what you did resulted in the damage you are claiming warranty for.

Re: Flash another ROM

[Anonymous Coward]

I've flashed my S4 with a different ROM, not sure what you're on about.

Re: Flash another ROM

[toadlife]

Sorry, I guess I should have been more specific. There are a few variants of the S4. I'm taking about the Verizon version. It originally shipped with an unlocked bootloader when it first came out. Samsung then updated it with a locked bootloader and it has never been cracked. By the time I got mine it had already been patched with the locked bootloader.

Re: Flash another ROM

[toadlife]

You must not have the Verizon version then. See my reply above.

Re:Flash another ROM

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure its the carriers that lock the bootloaders.

Re: Flash another ROM

[Miamicanes]

It might be a Verizon S4... VZW takes bootloader-locking 'evil' to creative new heights (lows?).

Apparently, when the Note 4 came out, Verizon actually paid extra to Samsung for them to protect the Sprint version's bootloader the same way (Sprint itself was indifferent) just to make sure there wouldn't be another CDMA model with easy-to-unlock bootloader. From what I recall, the Verizon model of one of Samsung's earlier phones could be cracked by flashing a Sprint bootloader to the Verizon phone... it temporarily bricked the phone (or at least disabled the radio modem), but then you could unlock the easy-to-unlock Sprint-version bootloader & reflash it with a second bootloader that was basically a Sprint Android bootloader w/ripped Verizon radio modem firmware to give you a working, bootloader-unlocked Verizon phone. Verizon was determined to keep it from happening again.

Re:Flash another ROM

[Mister Transistor]

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.

Re:Flash another ROM

[JustNiz]

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

Re: Flash another ROM

[toadlife]

Yes, it was the Verizon variant. It initially shipped with an unlocked bootloader, but an early update locked it for good. When I got mine it was already locked.
It was especially annoying to me because not only had I run custom ROMs, I had made my own ROMs with every one of my previous smartphones going back to my T-Mobile Wing running Windows Mobile 6.1.
It was half a phone to me.

Re:Flash another ROM

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course you had to know more about his smartphone than he does.

Re: Flash another ROM

[yuriklastalov]

Jesus, just the thought of using stock Samsung software sends shivers down my spine and a hot anger rise to my face. Fuck Samsung stock ROMs forever, I don't care how much "better" the apologists claim TouchWiz has gotten. It's complete and utter shit no matter what they do, it will always be utter shit, again, no matter what they do. They have produced a software product so bad that nothing short of complete annihilation will ever fix it.

Repeat after me: FUCK SAMSUNG

Screw the Corporate Overlords!

[jediborg]

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:Screw the Corporate Overlords!

[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.

Re:Screw the Corporate Overlords!

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct there is a never ending conveyor belt of andro-sheep and i-sheep waiting. The iPhone was never even a geek toy from the beginning. It was always seen as a Stalinist wet dream from early days. Even from the beginning, a culture of blind slackers using these devices makes it even worse. Nobody's forcing you to buy them - just your own ego.

when units starting shipping

[Anonymous Coward]

When Slashdot can English

Re: when units starting shipping

[Anonymous Coward]

It was a haiku. You fucked it up.

Nope. Bought a Nexus years ago; disappointed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only has it always required binary blobs and Android, but Google routinely dragged its feet in releasing the latest updates to the Open Source "community".

It has been a sham.

Re:Nope. Bought a Nexus years ago; disappointed.

[exomondo]

Not only has it always required binary blobs and Android, but Google routinely dragged its feet in releasing the latest updates to the Open Source "community".

Requiring binary blobs is pretty much the status quo in the PC market too, there are very few fully open source PCs and of course there are also very few fully open source phones. That isn't to say many people haven't tried but it's hard to develop and fund something that nobody wants.

Re: Nope. Bought a Nexus years ago; disappointed.

[Miamicanes]

The difference is, "desktop" Windows has historically given us compatibility with drivers written for older versions (sometimes, as old as NT4) -- imaging drivers being the one notable exception due to TWAIN's brain-dead pre-WDM architecture).

In contrast, Linux only abstracts its ABI for *applications*, not the kernel itself. For example, suppose I have a 4.10.10 kernel compiled for AMD64 using gcc, and a loadable kernel module built for that kernel. Now, suppose I have an identical computer running a 4.10.10 AMD64 kernel compiled with Visual Studio (just to give another widely-used compiler as an example). In most cases, the .ko file built for the "gcc" kernel will die a horrible death on the "Visual Studio" kernel... or possibly, even another 4.10.10 kernel compiled with gcc using slightly different options.

Basically, Linux doesn't even *try* to maintain driver binary compatibility, even within THE SAME KERNEL VERSION, while Windows bends over backwards to maintain driver compatibility more or less "forever". AFAIK, it's an ideological decision... Linux's developers *want* to punish users of binary drivers & inflict the maximum possible pain, totally ignoring the reality that end users (or at least, users of cell phones capable of doing LTE on American mobile phone networks) have ZERO influence on Qualcomm or Nvidia's licensing policies... ironically, empowering VENDORS over end users in the process.

Riddle me this: why could Linux use binary wifi drivers built for fsck'ng WINDOWS (via NDISwrapper), but can't even maintain binary compatibility between two sequential kernel releases with only minor differences? It's insane. I don't even blame Linus... I blame Google. Google has some of the best Linux kernel experts on planet earth. They could EASILY add an abstraction layer that preserved binary .ko compatibility across at least a few releases (think: a stable, open-source thunking layer that Android-certified drivers were required to use instead of directly referencing kernel structures... new release of Android? Just compile a new thunking layer for old binary drivers to use instead.)

Re: Nope. Bought a Nexus years ago; disappointed.

[exomondo]

I agree with you on the way the instability of the kernel ABI has an effect on binary drivers but even then there is a solution in the form of compiling a kernel module to load the binary driver - which is what nVidia (and others) do with their binary drivers. Of course doing that requires a compiler and kernel headers which Android may not provide and it might not be practical to do so.

Google could enforce all of this through their licensing of Android in the way they enforce having their apps installed with Google Play Services...but they don't and it's in the interest of OEMs to get people to buy a new device rather than maintain older ones especially when the margins aren't particularly large.

My point was only that the binary blob requirement has, for the most part, always been there whether it's Linux on the PC or Linux on the smartphone.

Re: Nope. Bought a Nexus years ago; disappointed.

[Anonymous Coward]

> ..even then there is a solution in the form of compiling a kernel module to load the binary driver - which is what nVidia (and others) do with their binary drivers.

Yep. Vote parent up and GP down.

> ...Linux's developers *want* to punish users of binary drivers & inflict the maximum possible pain...

Lolno.

Linux kernel devs want to be able to make ABI-breaking changes to internal kernel structures whenever it's necessary, rather than whenever Qualcomm and Nvidia and friends feel that it's convenient. The kernel devs _beg_ companies to get their drivers into the upstream kernel where they'll be maintained by the kernel devs, free of charge, until people stop using the hardware they drive.

Re: Nope. Bought a Nexus years ago; disappointed.

[Miamicanes]

Another major annoyance: no Android phones -- not even NEXUS phones -- allow you to use the stock rom as a STARTING POINT for further modifications (by furnishing a build script with complete source and any binary blobs required to build the stock ROM). Instead, you're forced to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and reimplement the phone's functionality in its entirety (since AOSP itself usually has major stock features missing, even for a Nexus).

For YEARS, I've been wanting to make a slightly-modified kernel that acts like you have the display orientation set to "manual", BUT reads the accelerometer and sets the orientation ONE TIME immediately after the user toggles the display off and on by pressing the power button twice. Basically, offering a compromise between "auto" and "manual" -- "semi-automatic". Toggling the power button twice is a quick & easy gesture, and IMHO setting the orientation immediately (but ONLY) after turning on the display is just common sense. It blows my mind that anyone at Google thinks the way auto-orientation has worked ever since we lost slide-out keyboards is actually acceptable. At the very least, Google's auto-orientation-setting routine should have enough logic to notice the user violently rotating the phone (and maybe listen for an angry "God DAMN it!") in the immediate aftermath of an auto-orientation change... especially when the phone's display is angled downwards (ie, the user is lying in bed holding the phone above his face).

I'd also love to implement what I call "CrashCam Mode" -- Crash, as in "you see a jet about to crash (or some other newsworthy event, like a police officer beating the crap out of a 95 year old woman in a wheelchair) and only have a second or two before it'll be too late to film the million-dollar video for CNN". Basically, if the user presses the power button four+ times within 400ms, instantly disable autofocus, set focus it to infinity, and start capturing video at the maximum resolution and framerate while launching the camera app itself. For good measure, if the camera supported 120fps, you could have the odd frames be set to some exposure suitable for either indoor lighting or morning/late-afternoon daylight, then alternate the even frames between under-exposed and over-exposed (to ensure that you'd end up with at least 30fps of usable video if the lighting were really dark or bright).

Oh... and I'd also remove the 911 emergency-dialer-without-unlock that seems to be the new norm, and make it impossible for the dialer screen to activate unless I've either fingerprint-unlocked the phone, or done a complex gesture like the Donut/Eclair/Froyo-era "deliberately slide the dot along a precise arc to unlock". Frankly, I'm more likely to die from an aneurysm in a moment of rage after hearing DTMF tones coming from my pocket (when the phone is SUPPOSED to be locked) than I am to die because some random onlooker couldn't use my phone (instead of their own) to call 911.

Re: Nope. Bought a Nexus years ago; disappointed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Google has some of the best Linux kernel experts on planet earth. They could EASILY add an abstraction layer that preserved binary .ko compatibility across at least a few releases (think: a stable, open-source thunking layer that Android-certified drivers were required to use instead of directly referencing kernel structures... new release of Android?

Seemed to contradict yourself there, son.

Re: Nope. Bought a Nexus years ago; disappointed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux doesn't even TRY for binary compatibility - because it is considered UNNECESSARY.

You (or your friendly distro maintainer) is free to recompile the kernel & its modules at will. Therefore, no need for compatibility other than on the source level. (Where there is indeed compatibility.) If a new kernel release changes something - well you need to have that kernel compiled in order to use it at all. When you (or distro maintainer) compile that - compile the external module as well and all will be fine.

So there is no compatibility problem within linux. And no compatibility problem with external source modules either.

There is a compatibility problem with idiots who think they can release a binary blob for linux. That is not supported, but not a problem since binary blobs interfacing to the kernel is unnecessary. It is not something linux needs. Binary blobs not interfacing to the kernel is fine - such as firmware.

Whether you program drivers for linux or windows, you have to follow some specs to be 'compatible'. Windows may give you a (semi-) stable ABI, but there are a lot of things you are not allowed to depend upon on windows too, to maintain compatibility across versions. (The most banal example being depending on the exact version number, but there are lots of other examples.)

When microsoft release a new version and some drivers break - people rightfully blame the driver writer and not microsoft. The manufacturer scrambles to release a new driver, or don't give a damn if the hw product is old. Blame microsoft only when they break their own spec.

When there is a new linux and some drivers break, idiots wrongly accuse linux when the driver writer didn't follow the spec (perhaps by releasing a binary-only driver, which was never supported!) Properly written drivers keeps working - even if the product is quite old.

You wouldn't buy an arduino for running windows on - because it is not supported. Similarly, don't think it is a good idea buying a graphics card with closed-source drivers for a linux rig. It may work today, it may break (or loose performance) tomorrow. If you need a guaranteed level of performance on linux, sort alternatives by what the open drivers give you. Don't consider the performance for closed drivers (or whatever is considered the best hw for windows.)

Re: Nope. Bought a Nexus years ago; disappointed.

[Anonymous Coward]

The entire point of buying a graphics card is to get higher performance. The closed-source drivers do the best job of providing the performance that hardware is capable of.

It is stupid to trade ideology for performance, especially when you've already paid for it.

Re: Nope. Bought a Nexus years ago; disappointed.

[Miamicanes]

> Seemed to contradict yourself there, son.

Not really. There's no contradiction between, "they have the institutional knowledge and resources to do it" and "Google's management isn't interested in dedicating their best senior developers for several months to take leadership of Android's binary kernel-driver problem".

The fact is, if it weren't for Android, Linux's device driver issues would be mostly irrelevant, because they'd meaningfully affect *maybe* a few thousand actual users. Google is the entire reason why roughly 97% of the Linux-running devices on earth actually RUN Linux, and it's high time they took responsibility and assumed leadership for fixing its driver and bootloading mess for the sake of Android's own users. Because god knows, there just about the only ones in a position to actually DO it. Gnu would rather have everyone rot in Tivo-ized hardware hell for all eternity than concede defeat to Qualcomm for the sake of empowering end users to make the best of a situation with only bad and worse alternatives.

The biggest single problem with Android phones and tablets is the fact that, with the POSSIBLE exception of Intel-based Chinese devices capable of dual-booting Windows and Android, there's no direct equivalent to a PC BIOS (and even with dual-boot devices, it's iffy). On a PC, there are well-defined universal standards for making an operating system bootable from fixed and removable storage media that have evolved in compatible ways since the 1980s. Everyone agrees upon where the boot sector goes, where in RAM it should be loaded, and how it should be interpreted during the first moments after powering on the device. With Android devices, there's no such thing... every single vendor does it differently, and most of them take advantage of the opportunity to lock down the device and exercise control the owner's experience long after its purchase by the end user.

Re: Nope. Bought a Nexus years ago; disappointed.

[Miamicanes]

OK, fine. Try this: name one real phone available for purchase today by end users with the following features:

* full-speed compatibility with at least one American phone network. This is a hard one, because thanks to bastardized American LTE, even our nominally-GSM carriers have become as de-facto proprietary as Sprint & Verizon.

* 2GHz+ CPU, 3+ gigs of RAM, and 64+ gigs of fast flash. Bonus points for microSD, removable battery, and/or the ability to charge quickly.

* 2160x1440 or better display.

* Released with all the sourcecode, build scripts, and documentation necessary for knowledgeable end users to independently implement support for later releases of Android, even without the active blessing or cooperation of the vendor.

The problem isn't that Linux EVER breaks binary compatibility... it's the fact that it routinely and casually breaks binary compatibility up, down, left, right, diagonally, and with "three snaps in 'Z' formation" with every single new build (let alone version).

The fact is, end users are powerless to exert any kind of meaningful market influence or economic pressure over Qualcomm, because they have a de-facto monopoly over American LTE. If you want full-speed LTE on an American network, it's basically "Qualcomm or nothing". At least if we had some degree of meaningful binary kernel module compatibility, we could limp along with the original binary drivers when a new version of Android gets released and the phone's manufacturer has abandoned it because it's no longer a current model.

hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

explosive news!!

Not hard at all

[rsilvergun]

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...

A wise company

[Anonymous Coward]

Would devise a way to make it easier.

As a owner of many samsung mobile products

[Anonymous Coward]

I own a S7 Edge, S4 Note, S3 Note, Note and a number of Samsung tablets.

Samsung can fuck right off on trying to push this forced assistant button on people.

There's an easy and obvious workaround for this:

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called an iPhone. FTFY.

Originally you could remap the button

[bongey]

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...

walled garden! walled garden! ermagerhd!!!!!!

[Uberbah]

/wankery

+1

[Anonymous Coward]

not that I would throw my money away on that overweight fancy looking brick anyway.

Get out of here with your innovation!

[Anonymous Coward]

You want to innovate? Then go get a taxable job with Google, you hippy.

Do we need first fire extinguisher?

[Daleonis]

We will see soon.

S3 still seems good to me...

[Anonymous Coward]

replicant + s3.....