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Samsung has finally started allowing the Bixby button on the S8 lineup and the new Note8 to be disabled… well, partially at least.  Bixby is Samsung’s assistant built into these phones and one of the biggest complaints about the Galaxy S8 lineup when it was released this summer was the fact that the dedicated hardware button for the assistant could not be disabled or remapped (to say Google Assistant).  Samsung stood by their decision and despite numerous hacks to get around this (which Samsung subsequently closed with software updates), pretty much forced the issue with users.  Until this past weekend.

A small software update for the Galaxy S8, S8 Plus and Note8 is allowing the button to be partially disabled.  In the Bixby settings, you can disable to button although it will still fire up if you long press the button.  The software update does not allow for remapping of the button.

A few weeks back, HMD’s Juho Sarvikas tweeted that the entire Nokia lineup would be getting updated to Android Oreo in late 2017 through early 2018.  Now Mr. Sarvikas, the Chief Product Officer for the company, has tweeted a couple of images of the Nokia 8 being updated to Oreo.

We are on it @nokiamobile . @Android #Oreo maturing nicely on #Nokia8 , will release when perfect. Stay tuned! pic.twitter.com/wPxEGA4rJn

— Juho Sarvikas (@sarvikas) September 16, 2017

While it would be great to see this update out for everyone, it is quite encouraging to see Nokia being transparent about their update process and the fact they actually have a running beta for their flagship device.

After weeks of pre-orders from carriers and Samsung themselves, the Galaxy Note8 is finally available for purchase.  The new phablet, which has been receiving rave reviews and has set a record for pre-orders, can now be purchased directly from Samsung, carriers and Amazon.  It is also available in 42 markets globally with more coming in the next few weeks.

For those that don’t recall, the Galaxy Note8 is a  6.3″ device that renders at 1440 x 2560 resolution with an 18.5:9 aspect ratio.  Physically it is 162.5 x 74.6 x 8.6mm and weighs 195g.  In old money, that’s 6.39 x 2.9 x .34 inches and a weight of 6.87 ounces.   It is powered by the Snapdragon 835 processor here in the US while the international version will be powered by Samsung’s own Exynos 8895 processor.  Regardless of which version you get, it will have an eye watering 6GB of RAM and 64GB of onboard storage.  That storage can be expanded up to 2TB thanks to the MicroSD slot.

This morning, the Chrome team within Google has begun pushing out a minor update to Chrome OS for the majority of devices.  The new update is build 60.0.3112.114 (Platform version: 9592.94.0) for those keeping score at home.  It is coming to all devices except the Acer Chromebook 15 (CB3-532) and the Samsung Chromebook 3.

The update is predominantly made up of security fixes and bug fixes in the platform with a handful of feature enhancements too.  The release notes on this update were vague as to what was addressed or fixed, but that is common for Chrome OS releases that are small in nature and midstream from the main releases every 6 weeks or so.