Samsung brings Siri-competing Bixby assistant to US three months after Galaxy S8 launch
Samsung on Wednesday announced that Bixby, its equivalent of Apple's Siri, is now available on U.S. versions of the Galaxy S8 and S8+ -- roughly three months after the phones first launched.
An update is rolling out to S8 owners on AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon, and U.S. Cellular, Samsung said. Bixby has been available on South Korean versions of the phones from the beginning, but until now there was no English translation, despite a dedicated Bixby button being built into every unit. Indeed the assistant remains unavailable in other English-speaking countries such as Canada and the U.K.
Bixby is in theory capable of more voice commands than Siri, including app and hardware controls that are touch-only on Apple devices. This should extend to at least some third-party apps -- Google has enabled the technology for Maps, Play Music, and YouTube.
Driven partly by the assistant's absence in most countries, a number of coders have been modifying Samsung software to let people remap the Bixby button. Samsung, though, has been deliberately crippling these modifications.
Apple is planning at least a handful of Siri improvements in tandem with this fall's iOS 11, including translation, more natural voices, and cross-device sync.
The company could potentially have more Siri upgrades waiting in the wings, given plans to launch the HomePod in December. That device will have to compete against cheaper smartspeakers from Amazon and Google, both of which have assistants typically considered more advanced than Siri. Samsung is rumored to be working on a Bixby speaker.
An update is rolling out to S8 owners on AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon, and U.S. Cellular, Samsung said. Bixby has been available on South Korean versions of the phones from the beginning, but until now there was no English translation, despite a dedicated Bixby button being built into every unit. Indeed the assistant remains unavailable in other English-speaking countries such as Canada and the U.K.
Bixby is in theory capable of more voice commands than Siri, including app and hardware controls that are touch-only on Apple devices. This should extend to at least some third-party apps -- Google has enabled the technology for Maps, Play Music, and YouTube.
Driven partly by the assistant's absence in most countries, a number of coders have been modifying Samsung software to let people remap the Bixby button. Samsung, though, has been deliberately crippling these modifications.
Apple is planning at least a handful of Siri improvements in tandem with this fall's iOS 11, including translation, more natural voices, and cross-device sync.
The company could potentially have more Siri upgrades waiting in the wings, given plans to launch the HomePod in December. That device will have to compete against cheaper smartspeakers from Amazon and Google, both of which have assistants typically considered more advanced than Siri. Samsung is rumored to be working on a Bixby speaker.
Comments
seriously, let’s not have such selective memory.
Except this is an iPhone knockoff. We have ZERO tolerance for knockoffs.
sure, it’s late, and that’s not great. But software is often late. Samsung just decided, about a year ago that they wanted to compete with Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft in this area. How long did it take Apple to get Siri out the door, and as a beta for two years? And by every count, Siri has fallen behind those other, later competitors.
this is really such a minor thing. And as for ripoffs, there’s no doubt that Samsung is the Great Copier. Granted, but in the last few years, they’ve mostly moved by themselves. When the iPhone 8 comes out, people are going to say that not only does it copy the Galaxy S8, but it also needs Samsung OLEDs.
Oh, so now you’re down to one button? A button that will very shortly be used for its function? A function that was its purpose? Are you pretending that the button is useless? Yes, for 90 days, it wasn’t functional. That’s a major issue for you? Is that now the big problem? What about the crippled camera on the iPhone +, when it couldn’t use portrait mode? That doesn’t count? Or how about the two years it took Apple to get maps really working properly?
Of course that is all in theory. In practice it's slow and sucks at performing the simplest tasks and it's redundant with what Google assistant does already.
Again, you're the one that's made the claim that Apple has repeatedly done this yet when I mention an entire button on a device having no use you can't answer my question.
What Samsung should've done was either delay the HW release or just integrate the button to call Bixby into another button. Imagine if the rumours about Apple's future of Touch ID are true, and it will be placed behind the display, but they had also settled on a physical design where there's an extra physical button on the side specifically to call Siri and Touch ID but is now just a dead toe that does nothing when pressed. Would you defend that move?
and by "by every count, Siri has fallen behind those other, later competitors.", are just counting the losses. Siri works for me when setting up reminders and appointments.
Granted, I am only one data point, but have you used both side by side?