When a giant corporation fails so mercilessly, even Chuck Norris jokes stop being funny

I’m sure Captain Picard would also be disappointed with Bixby on the Galaxy Watch. (Credit: Midjourney/GameStar)

I have to admit that for a long time I was skeptical about how much a smartwatch would really bring me. After all, I almost always have my cell phone with me anyway. In the meantime, I still don’t want to be without my Galaxy Watch 5 – with one big exception.

Which function is it? I mean Samsung’s voice assistant Bixby. In my experience, the huge, international company fails mercilessly on its own smartwatch, as we will see in a very striking example including Chuck NorrisJoke will see.

Bixby could potentially be so useful for me because we don’t have an alternative like Alexa in the house and because my watch is always with me, even when I’m not at home. And thanks to eSIM, I don’t even need my cell phone nearby to be online.

Basically, it’s wonderfully quick to raise your arm, Hi Bixby to say and ask my question. In addition, I often don’t have my cell phone to hand as an alternative because it’s on my desk or somewhere else.

In the case of my Galaxy Watch 5 and Bixby, however, in my experience it is pure wishful thinking to be able to use the app as smoothly as just described. By the way, you can find out how a Galaxy Watch generally performs against an Apple Watch here:

➡️ After 7 years of Apple Watch, I wear a Samsung Smartwatch – my conclusion after 3 months

Bixby failure: A recent example

I’ve owned the Galaxy Watch 5 for over eight months now and during that time I’ve been disappointed almost every time I’ve tried my luck with Bixby. The most recent example: the actually very simple question of who will write the children’s book again The Sam’s wrote (spoiler: it was Paul Maar).

In the classic online search, Google already tells me this while I’m typing it into the search field. With Bixby, on the other hand, I can be happy if I get an answer at all that can be taken seriously. My little current woe story:

1. At the first try did the app change itself after calling it up via Hi Bixby-Announcement simply closed again directly. A problem that in my experience is very common.
2. On the second try Bixby has the extremely useful reminder Write to Sam entered in my calendar. Sure, I’ll just become an author myself!
3. On the third try I get the answer in a nutshell Chuck Norris. I’m not against humor and I like Chuck Norris jokes, but that’s going a little too far.

I wouldn’t mind a little Chuck Norris joke here and there if the app was generally reliable. But everything about brushing your teeth with the kids on the announcement Hours 3 Minutes goes beyond that is far too often doomed to failure.

No Bixby, I didn’t want to hear that from you either when I asked you who wrote “Das Sams”.

Bixby is not alone

I know Bixby’s failure comes as no surprise. After all, there was already a lot of excitement about the smartphone version of it, which worked less than well, and it is questionable how many resources Samsung is still putting into the project.

In addition, other language assistants such as Siri or the Google Assistant often don’t exactly cover themselves with glory – even if the latter works with a Galaxy Watch and is supposed to deliver better results there, which I will try in the future.

The failure of Bixby is all the more annoying because I find the basic idea so promising. This is especially true in combination with a smartwatch, because I almost always have the watch ready or on my wrist.

But if practically every attempt to quickly get specific information with Bixby fails at some point, then the app largely loses its raison d’être.

I doubt there will ever be a fix for this problem, at least in the case of Bixby. At the same time, I’m very happy to let Samsung teach me otherwise. If you already want to read good news from the Samsung cosmos, you will find it in this news:

Do you own a Galaxy Watch? If so, do you use Bixby on it and what are your experiences with it, if any? If not, do you own another smartwatch with a voice assistant you can report on? Also, is there an alternative to Bixby that you can particularly recommend? Or do you generally not use language assistants? Feel free to write it in the comments!