Samsung announced its Bixby Assistant as a brand new feature which the company intended for the Galaxy S8+ and Galaxy S8 flagships. It was touted as the Siri-killer, which would give the South Korean company a substantial edge over its competition. However, things did not go as planned and Bixby's development could not be completed within the stipulated time. As a result, the Galaxy S8 launched with only some of the features promised to fans, while Samsung claimed that the other crucial ones would be unlocked over time through software updates.
One of the most important features which were unavailable at the launch of the flagship device was the ability of Bixby to understand and process English voice commands. Fans were disappointed that Samsung had not included the Voice Command functionality as it is perhaps the essential feature of an AI assistant. Now, almost four months since the launch of the Galaxy S8, the company has finally announced that it is rolling out the English voice command feature.
English voice command now available for Bixby
On Wednesday, July 19, Samsung announced that it had finally fixed the issues plaguing the feature previously. The update for the voice command feature would now be rolling out all across the United States.
It is being reported that the voice command functionality works quite well for the digital assistant as it is able to perform simple and even some complex tasks.
Samsung announced that the Bixby assistant would be able to execute such simple tasks as turning on the flashlight of the phone or taking a selfie through voice command.
However, it can also be commanded to do much more complex tasks such as setting reminders by ordering, "remind me to pick up cheese from the grocery store," or "find the pictures I took in France and create an album called Journey."
Samsung also claims that through a complex deep learning process, the Bixby assistant can learn to better understand what a user is saying.
Each person speaks a little differently and understanding the commands could be difficult for different people. However, Samsung says Bixby can adapt over time and adjust its understanding. Currently, the voice command feature is available only for English and Korean. However, the company assured its fans that support for additional languages will arrive soon. It did not however specifically state when they would be coming.
Is Bixby better than Apple's Siri?
While it is still too early to compare both of the voice assistants, Bixby is currently no match for Siri. This is mainly because the Samsung assistant is quite strict in terms of how a command has to be phrased and also takes a longer time to respond to "Hi Bixby" and certain commands. So currently, Siri and the Google Assistant is perhaps better than Bixby in terms of voice commands.
