Samsung has finally joined in on the bandwagon of having its very own virtual assistant. Earlier today, the company revealed a new assistant by the name of Bixby. According to Samsung, the virtual assistant will launch with the much awaited Samsung Galaxy S8, which is expected to be announced next week. Once the virtual assistant launches, other appliances will eventually carry support for the technology.
Based on the announcement made by the company, the Bixby will come with its own dedicated button on the side of the device. Through this button, users can communicate with the virtual assistant just like how they normally would with a walkie talkie. Apart from this dedicated button, Samsung says that the virtual assistant is capable of supporting all the features and functions of an app. This allows Bixby to differ from the rest of its competition like Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana, and Google's Assistant since these only provide limited capabilities. Samsung proves to be thinking long term with Bixby as it intends to replace text or touch-based input for every app completely.
Another feature Samsung will include with Bixby is the ability to understand what a user is doing on his device once they call the assistant. Through this feature, Bixby will be able to take over on what the user was doing with the app. This, again, is a unique feature since Bixby is able to work with what the user is doing.
Finally, Samsung designed Bixby to be flexible with its voice commands. Unlike Alexa, you will not need to memorize specific instructions on what you want to do. Bixby has been designed to keep learning through more information instead of routing you to a different source if it can not figure out what you wish to do with it.
Since Samsung has more important plans for Bixby in the future, it intends for its virtual assistant platform to build a relationship with its users. They hope that by 2019, digital assistants would play a vital role on how customers interact with their devices at home. With Bixby in the picture, it seems like Samsung is finally stepping up from its disappointment with its first voice assistant "S Voice" technology. Launched in 2012 together with the Galaxy S3, the technology proved to be unreliable and widely panned. Hopefully, this will not be the case with Bixby.
Get to know more about Bixby when Samsung announces it on March 29th, alongside with the Samsung Galaxy S8.
