14 DAY TRIAL // Samsung introduced its own artificial intelligence assistant, Bixby, with the company’s latest flagships, the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+. The South Korean giant also announced that the new assistant would work on older Samsung smartphones, as well as a number of other devices.
The device maker didn’t mention which smartphones would get Bixby, but an official announcement will most likely be made after the Galaxy S8 arrives on April 21. However, takerhbk found that any Samsung device running on Android Nougat can run Bixby.
Users must first install the Samsung Galaxy S8 launcher on the phone and then install the Bixby apk, activate Samsung’s virtual assistant and reboot the phone. Bixby can be accessed by swiping the screen left on the phone.
The method worked on a Galaxy S7
On Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ models, Bixby has its own dedicated physical button for calling on the virtual assistant and receiving answers to all sorts of questions, just like Google, Cortana and Siri. It’s worth mentioning that the method doesn’t work for everyone, some said that they accessed Bixby without any issue after the reboot, while others claimed that the virtual assistant crashed after being launched.
Samsung’s Bixby can look up nearby restaurants, access personal information like schedules or reservations, and call up messages and news.
Moreover, Bixby has the capacity to access third-party applications and uses augmented reality to translate text, read QR codes, or recognize landmarks. It can be successfully used for shopping online or analyzing various images and figuring out where they were taken.
Samsung has also said that Bixby will have the capacity to understand commands with incomplete information, while providing a seamless user experience to all. It remains to be seen when the South Korean company intends to officially make Bixby available to other Samsung smartphones, including previous Galaxy S flagships, like the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge. Until then, using the apk is a good way to check out the assistant’s features.