Samsung confirmed Bixby on Galaxy S8 feature

Fariha Khan
March 21, 2017
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Samsung had placed the title Bixby inside a local privacy page, verifying the name of the voice-based virtual assistant that we were anticipating in the Galaxy S8. Interestingly, it is not for the first time that we have come across the clues of Bixby to Samsung’s assistant innovations. However, it’s the first time that the firm has made use of the word in its documentation. As it seems to be, Bixby could be a real game-changer for the mobile market or it might turn out to be a complete failure.

“Depending on your model and region, you will be able to tell your Mobile Device to activate certain functions, such as playing songs from a playlist or looking up for something on the web using S Voice,” the translation of the paragraph in question reads. “In addition to that, you will be able to control all the operations made with the touch interface using voice commands with Bixby.”

Samsung would not want to tell much about Bixby at this stage. However, it seems that Bixby will coexist with S Voice, which is the boring voice assistant available on Galaxy devices already.

The translation may imply that Bixby will be able to manage all you can do on the phone with the help of the touch-based interface. If that is really the case and depending on how advanced it would be, that could mark a great development over what other assistants can do.

The fact that S Voice will live as an independent module might be rather puzzling, particularly if some commands will be limited to S Voice and others to Bixby. It’s tough to manage one virtual assistant.

Another thing to take notice is that S Voice and Bixby will compete against Google’s search-based Assistant which is also expected to run on all Android 7.0 Nougat handsets that release in 2017. Will we have to manage 3 assistants to take care of on the Samsung Galaxy S8? Samsung might give an answer to that during its media event that is to be held on March 29th.