Samsung's Bixby smart assistant finally comes to Canadian Galaxy S8 phones

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

A long six monts after it was unveiled alongside the Samsung Galaxy S8, Gear 360' Camea and Gear VR, the Bixby smart assistant is finally coming to Canadian Galaxy S8 devices.

Bixby rollout was off to a shaky start. It was key differentiator for the Galaxy S8 (Samsung even built-in a proprietary button for the service) but didn't appear on devices until last month. While Samsung touts Bixby's capabilities and advanced assistant features. Bixby is expected to transcend mobile devices and be integrated into other appliances. Samsung likely got Bixby out of the gate today because it will be included in the Galaxy Note8, which is the phablet they are launching this week and is the successor to the faulty and exploding Note7.

Click to read more ...

Samsung’s Bixby voice assistant comes to the US

While there’s still no sign of Bixby anywhere here yet, Samsung just launched its voice assistant in the US, a few months after it was introduced alongside the debut of the Galaxy S8 and S8+. It was released in South Korea in May and it looks like it’s finally ready to take on the English-speaking market in the US. Hopefully it makes its way here soon, too. With Samsung adamantly not letting users remap the Bixby buttons on the S8 devices, it would be better if the physical Bixby button actually served a purpose.

Source: Samsung

Samsung begins testing Bixby Voice in the US

An early access program available to Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ users in the US are giving them a chance to try out Bixby Voice ahead of its official launch. Bixby Voice, which is Samsung’s answer to Siri and Google Assistant, is supposedly being rolled out late this month. With that coming up, Samsung has launched the aforementioned program, which lets some users beta test the assistant before everyone else. Those who can access the testing (there will be a “limited” number of users) will need to use their Samsung accounts to register and have the Galaxy S8 or S8+ since the feature isn’t available on other devices yet.

Source: Engadget

Samsung Galaxy S8 to launch without Bixby voice assistant feature

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

While touted as one of the big features of the new Samsung Galaxy S8 line, the Bixby voice assistant was sorely missing on the demo units handed out during the New York launch event, which means there was no way for us to test the assistant during the brief time we were given with the device.

It seems that Bixby voice is not ready for prime time and will not be included when the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ ship on April 21 in Canada. Other Bixby features, including Vision, Home, and Reminder will be on tap at launch date with Bixby Voice chiming in 'Later this Spring.' Voice assistants are tricky. Siri and even Cortana took a while to ship with their full feature set in Canada and this is also possibly the reason why Google Home isn't shipping its devices outside the US and UK. We'll be on standby to see what Samsung releases in a month's time.