Samsung has begun rolling out the preview of its Bixby voice feature for Galaxy S8 users in the United States. The voice assistant feature on Samsung's Bixby is rolling out to select users who enrolled for early access program. The assistant was initially said to arrive in April but got delayed due to issues with training the digital assistant.
Samsung first detailed Bixby, its Siri competitor in March ahead of Galaxy S8 launch. At the launch of its Galaxy S8 series, the South Korean smartphone maker pitched Bixby as the USP of its flagship lineup. However, when Galaxy S8 went on sale in April, Bixby did not support voice feature.
Most reports suggested that Samsung delayed Bixby's voice feature because the assistant struggled with understanding English syntax and grammar. The assistant was expected to launch during the first week of June but is now expected to roll out to all S8 users by the end of this month.
Samsung's Bixby will only support US English and Korean, making it limited against Google Assistant and Siri. With Bixby, Samsung is aiming to replace all touch-based interactions on a smartphone into a voice-based activity. The company is using Viv's developer tools to offer deep integration with third party apps. The Verge notes that Bixby is cool in some select applications but fails to catch basic voice-based requests.