Bixby on Samsung Galaxy S8 Will Not Support Voice Commands at Launch

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Published 12 Apr 2017

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At the Galaxy S8 launch event in late March, Samsung heavily highlighted its new AI-powered virtual assistant: Bixby. While Bixby might seem impressive on paper, it was already going to be pretty limited at launch due to its limited language support at launch.

Now, making matters worse, Samsung has confirmed that at launch, Bixby Voice i.e. the voice recognition aspect of the virtual assistant will not be available when the phone globally launches on April 21.

With its intelligent interface and contextual awareness, Bixby will make your phone more helpful by assisting in completing tasks, telling you what you’re looking at, learning your routine and remembering what you need to do. Key features of Bixby, including Vision, Home and Reminder, will be available with the global launch of the Samsung Galaxy S8 on April 21. Bixby Voice will be available in the U.S. on the Galaxy S8 later this spring.

This means that at launch, Bixby on Galaxy S8 will only support Bixby Vision, Bixby, and Reminder — functionality that is already present on Google Assistant. Considering that Samsung hyped up Bixby’s unveiling so much and has even included a dedicated button to trigger the assistant on the Galaxy S8, launching it without basic voice recognition capabilities feels like a huge failure on Samsung’s part — especially when you keep in mind that the S8 is launching later than usual when compared to previous Samsung’s flagships.

Considering that Samsung hyped up Bixby’s unveiling so much and has even included a dedicated button to trigger the assistant on the Galaxy S8, launching it without basic voice recognition capabilities feels like a huge failure on Samsung’s part — especially when you keep in mind that the S8 is launching later than usual when compared to previous Samsung’s flagships.

[Via Axios]