14 DAY TRIAL // When Samsung unveiled the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+, one of the main highlights was the company’s new virtual assistant, set to compete against Google Assistant, Siri, Cortana and Amazon’s Alexa. But the virtual assistant still has a long way to go before it can truly take on other AI assistants on the market.
Bixby was expected to be available on the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ smartphones upon launch, but its main feature wasn’t ready yet. The virtual assistant was launched without the voice commands component, one of its main features.
Voice commands for Bixby arrived later in South Korea and other countries, but the feature still isn’t available in the US. Samsung said that voice commands would arrive to Galaxy S8 and S8+ units in the US this spring, but the company will reportedly miss its own deadline.
Bixby Voice could arrive by the end of June in the US
The Wall Street Journal reveals that Samsung is having trouble teaching Bixby English and bringing the virtual assistant to the same level of syntax as in Korea. Bixby is reportedly having trouble understanding English and some time will pass until the digital assistant will be able to rap or make jokes, like it does in Korean. The report mentions that Samsung’s Bixby Voice could arrive sometime this summer, this means after June 21.
Bixby consists of multiple components, including Voice, Vision and Hello, but the Voice component is the most important. Voice commands allow users to perform various actions, like set reminders, access the contacts list or pull up information from the phone.
Bixby Voice was released in Korea a few weeks ago and it came with an interesting feature that allowed the virtual assistant to rap, beatbox and even claim that it’s better than Siri. The feature certainly got many customers excited about Bixby’s potential, but some customers could be disappointed if Samsung fails to deliver voice commands on time and resorts to delaying the rollout.