Samsung's virtual assistant hasn't had the smoothest launch since the Galaxy S8 and S8+ were made available to the public. In fact, we first heard that Bixby Voice wouldn't be available outside of Korea before the device was even released. Reports then pointed to a June release date for the United States but it wasn't until July until the feature was officially launched. After a rocky launch though, it now looks like Samsung has been able to bring the feature to more than 200 countries worldwide.
Availability hasn't been the only criticism that Samsung's new virtual assistant has received. Granted, a delayed release date along with fierce competition has been a big reason why some people lost interest in the platform. Some people just feel Bixby is incomplete and duplicates a lot of other virtual assistant features that have been widely available on Android for years. Although some do like how deeply Bixby has been integrated into Samsung's first-party applications.
After all of this work and effort, Samsung has been able to tackle one major issue the feature has had – availability. This week the company announced Bixby Voice capabilities are now available in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide. To use the feature right now though, you will need to own a Samsung Galaxy S8 or the Galaxy S8+. Samsung does say it's working on expanding the availability of Bixby, and like other Samsung services we can expect it to arrive to lower-end devices in some (perhaps diluted) form.
Not only are they working on bringing the feature to even more countries, but they also mention additional languages, devices, features and third-party applications. It will be interesting to see if they can (or want to) release Bixby for older and non-flagship devices as that could really expand its reach. It also makes sense to hear that they want to integrate these voice commands into more 3rd-party applications too, so they are likely trying to work with some of the more popular applications on the market.
Source: Samsung Newsroom
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