Bixby Voice will not be available for Samsung Galaxy S8’s launch in US
Samsung put a lot eggs in its basket. And by basket, we mean Bixby. In a statement to The Verge this afternoon, Samsung provided an update to the current state of Bixby pertaining to the States-side launch of the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+. .
Key features of Bixby, including Vision, Home, and Reminder will be available with the global launch of the Samsung Galaxy S8 on April 21. Bixby Voice will be available in the US… later this spring.
Bixby Voice was not going to be available outside of the US and South Korea at launch anyway, so the news that the United States won’t be able to use any of the new Voice features isn’t too surprising. As Samsung stated, Bixby Vision, Home, and Reminder will still work globally at launch. It’s only the voice part that will be delayed for a bit in the US before it eventually arrives for languages other than Korean.
Bixby on the Samsung Galaxy S8+
Samsung spent a lot of time talking about Bixby during its unveiling event in New York City, including the bit about Bixby saying “everything you can do with touch you can do with voice”. But if you recall, even the demo units we saw in New York didn’t have Bixby Voice enabled.
It’s a shame that the feature won’t be ready out of the box. But hey, you can reprogram the dedicated Bixby key to do something else, maybe summon another Assistant?
