Who would need to press the power button to actually turn off or restart the device, right?
The setting to change this is also pretty much buried under Settings -> Special Features -> Gestures.
(Yes, I have no idea why the Assistant is in German when the phone is set to English either 🫠)
It’s not about like or dislike. I’d have almost no complaints if they added a button or a unique gesture to open it, like they already had with holding the home button (looks like they may have removed that shortcut functionality). Or how some phones made the lock/power button touch sensitive so a touch (not press) or a swipe over it opened the assistant.
But silently changing the function of a standard piece of UI/controls that have been standard for over a decade, and common on even slide phones since the fucking pre-smart phone era?
I’m shocked that anyone actually needs this explained to them.
It would rightfully be a news story if Honda’s newest car hid the window controls behind a settings menu, and what normally were window controls (still visually the exact same and located in the standard spot on the door) raised and lowered your seat instead.
That’s all without getting into the mess that is a company trying to artificially pump user numbers of one of their products, or my personal dislike of these “assistants”.
Internal emails from Google have become public through court cases which reveal that the rumor they were making search worse intentionally is true, and it was in order to inflate their ad impression numbers. There is no reason to give them the benefit of the doubt on this, and active explicit reasons to do the opposite.
Was it a silent change? No mention in update notes or any marketing material? I truthfully don’t know, as I don’t have a phone affected by this.
Also, not meaning to come off as defending Google. I’m not. I know they don’t need me to defend them.
I don’t think “update notes or any marketing material” qualifies for making this kind of change non-silent - if the update is pushed through the same channel as regular security updates, and doesn’t explicitly notify the user the behavior of the button has changed, that’s pretty silent.
Often for those kinds of updates software will show a special introduction screen, tutorial, or outright a prompt asking you to choose between the new and old behavior - but that’s software from people that care about the user having a good experience, and making such changes is a big deal for them.