There are a lot of changes happening in smartphone design. We all know that Google ditched navigation buttons in the latest Android Pie builds. The company is trying to habituate gesture-based navigation to the users.
There is nothing wrong with it. But here we lose a little functionality if we stop to use navigation buttons. Google Assistant became a central hub for all the information requirements. People used to activate it by long pressing the Home button in the navigation buttons. If there are no navigation buttons, it becomes difficult to use Google Assistant. There is an alternative for this. We can configure Google Assistant hot word such as “OK Google” to activate it through our voice.
But using the hot word is not always preferable. There should be a dedicated button to activate the Google assistant. So, Google has an agreement with various phone manufacturing companies to meet the issue. Xiaomi, LG and Nokia are planning to release their upcoming models with a dedicated Google Assistant button. We can expect that other companies may follow the same trend for their newer models.
Samsung has been providing a dedicated button for it’s Bixby voice assistant for two years. There is a workaround to remap the Bixby button to Google Assistant. The latest trend indicates the role of the voice assistants which are going to be a part of our life.