News
Samsung may kill its voice assistant service “Bixby”
The South Korean tech conglomerate Samsung introduced its voice assistant service “Bixby” with the Galaxy S8 device back in the year 2017. After its launch, they even emerged a specific Bixby voice wake-up button on their Galaxy smartphone hardware. Not only that, but Samsung also provided various services and features with Bixby support, such as Bixby Routines and Bixby Vision. However, now it seems that the manufacturer intends to kill it.
Bixby is Samsung’s own voice assistant, just like Siri and Alexa. But it has been seen that Bixby is comparingly slow then Google’s Google Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa, and Apple’s Siri. Not just that, but Bixby was also found to be inaccurate and quite out-of-use for Galaxy phones which can be attributed as the reason for its future demise. By looking at the series of recent and older steps of Samsung, it seems that they are slowly cutting it down and even planning to eradicate it.
According to IT Home, Samsung has recently removed traces of Bixby from its various services and features. For example, its Bixby Routines, which was introduced with the Galaxy S10 device, previously required the activation of Bixby for access. But now, with One UI 5.0, they changed its name to “Modes & Routines” and forbid the requirement of Bixby to access it. Besides, even the power button personalization feature of RegiStar doesn’t contain the option for Bixby to be chosen but has Google Assistant instead.
Apart from these, the South Korean firm also removed the dedicated Bixby button from its Galaxy S20 model and later devices; instead, they only chose the regular volume and power buttons. Meanwhile, users can still wake up Bixby by long pressing the power key. Not only these, but the South Korean conglomerate also stopped developing the AR Bixby Vision in 2020, and since then, it isn’t seeing any improvements. They even planned to bring Google and Amazon to its Galaxy Home smart speakers, but it didn’t launch.
Those previously mentioned scenarios are clearly indicating that Samsung is slowly removing Bixby from its services and devices, which may lead to a complete demise in the future. However, they are still providing some of its features, like they recently made Bixby Routines available in some Galaxy A series devices, and the demise of Bixby has still not been officially announced by the company.
The Korean brand – Samsung has recently announced its two mid-range Galaxy smartphones – Galaxy A55 5G and Galaxy A35 5G. A new benchmark listing has a spot for Samsung’s affordable smartphone, Galaxy35 5G.
Samsung is now gearing up for its next affordable Galaxy smartphone, the M35 5G, as the reports are unvunveilhey have found a new benchmark listing for Samsung the Galaxy M35 5G.
The smartphone has been spotted with the model number as an identification code – SM-M356B on the Geekbench 6.2.2 database. Not only this, but it also confirmed the presence of 6GB of RAM and Android 14 OS. The chipset also came to know which is the latest Exynos 1380.
The codename for the motherboard is also mentioned, which is ‘s5e8835.’ The reports say that it has scored 656 and 1967 points in performance scores on the benchmarking platform. Exynos 1380 is the latest chipset of the Korean brand, which is a 5 nm processor. It consists of 4 Cortex A78 cores, which clock at 2.4GHz, and 4 Cortex A55 cores, which clock at 2.0GHz. It is coupled with a Mali g68 MP5 GPU. It also has an AI Engine.
This also offers connectivity options, which include the latest Bluetooth version 5.3 and Wi-Fi 802.11 ax with three bands. It supports a camera resolution of at least 200MP for capturing images, and for video recording, there is support for up to 30fps 4K recording. The storage supported is UFS v3.1, and RAM will be of the LPDDR4x/5 type.
Samsung has recently debuted its two smartphones, Galaxy A55, and Galaxy A35; the Galaxy A35 5G smartphone is powered by Exynos 1380 chipset. From this perspective, Galaxy M35 5G could be a variant of Galaxy A35.
At the moment, no specs and features of the device have been revealed or leaked. Still, since Galaxy M series smartphones usually have a bit higher battery power of at least 6000mAh, the forthcoming Galaxy M35 5G smartphone also arrives with the same battery power.
Firmware
Verizon rolls out the March 2024 security patch update for the Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Galaxy Z Flip 3 devices
Verizon has rolled out the March 2024 security patch update for the Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Galaxy Z Flip 3 devices. Earlier, these devices had received the same update outside the US, but now they are gradually expanding to the US.
The Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Galaxy Z Flip 3 are spotted getting new updates with the firmware version numbers F926USQS5HXBD and F711USQS6HXBD, respectively. It is worth noticing the update is currently available for the devices locked to Verizon, but it will soon be available on more carriers.
For your information, the latest update for Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Galaxy Z Flip 3 doesn’t bring any significant changes, but as it is the latest security patch, it will provide some internal fixes to maintain the security of the devices.
If you are getting some other issues from the last update, you should also update the device to the latest update, as it may also address some issues. Along with the update, other improvements may also be made to enhance the overall performance of the devices.
Suppose you use the Galaxy Z Fold 3 or Flip 3 device in the US. In that case, you can update the device to the latest version by simply going to the system settings and then to the software update. If you haven’t received the update, you should wait for some time, as it may arrive in the next few days.
Firmware
Samsung rolls out the March 2024 security patch update for the Galaxy S23 FE devices in the US
Samsung has rolled out the March 2024 security patch to almost all devices but still needs to complete the update distribution to all eligible devices. So, gradually expanding the update to remaining devices, the company has started rolling out the update for the Galaxy S23 FE in the US.
Notably, the Galaxy S23 FE devices are getting a new update in the carrier-unlocked version with the firmware version number S711U1UES2BXBF. The update has already been rolled out to almost all carriers, including AT&T, Bluegrass Cellular, C-Spire, Cellular South, Comcast, Cricket, DISH, MetroPCS, T-Mobile, Tracfone, US Cellular, Verizon, and Xfinity Mobile.
According to the official changelog, the March 2024 security patch is one of the standard maintenance updates that provides some internal improvements for the device, and there will be no visible changes available. In other words, users may experience some improvement in the functioning of devices, but it doesn’t particularly bring any specific changes for the device.
Going to the details, the March 2024 security patch includes more than 40 fixes, 37 of which are provided by Google and address the issues found in the Android OS, while 9 more features are introduced by Samsung that enhance the performance of Galaxy devices exclusively.
Suppose you are using the Galaxy S23 FE in the US. In that case, you can update the devices to the latest version by following the simple steps: first, go to the system settings, tap on the software update, and tap on the download and install button; if it shows a new update available, tap on the download button.