Samsung Galaxy S8’s Bixby voice-assistant: What’s really new here?

Now Bixby also comes with image recognition technology, meaning it will be able to do searches via the camera. A user could open up the camera, scan an object and ask Bixby to locate that product online. Or Bixby could scan a location, like say a restaurant and show up relevant results around this place, like reviews, menu, etc. Bixby will have also ‘contextual awareness’, and can show information in the form of cards. Of course, this is nothing new, Google Now has been displaying cards for quite sometime now.

Bixby it seems will be able to understand incomplete commands as well. For instance, in the demo, Samsung showed that when Bixby is triggered say when you are hunting for directions in a map, and you can say ‘Bixby send this to a contact,’ the assistant can figure out ‘this’ refers to the directions or whatever else you might be doing in a particular app. Finally Bixby is relies on machine learning to improve over time like other voice-assistants in the market. So the more you use it, the more accurate Bixby gets over time.

Also read: Samsung Galaxy S8, S8+: Release date is April 21, price is $724 and above

Of course, for Bixby a lot of these capabilities will depend on how soon third-party app developers decide to start working with the assistant. The other issue is Samsung hasn’t confirmed if the Bixby assistant will be rolled out to other phones. That could have a big impact in how developers decide. For starters, last year’s hit Galaxy S7, S7 edge phones have the Google Assistant running on them with the Android Nougat.

It is unclear if Samsung will keep this feature limited to the high-end smartphones. In that case, the number of users for Bixby gets limited instantly.

The other challenge for Bixby will be in proving that it is not just another voice-assistant in the market. It will have to become indispensable for Samsung Galaxy S8 users. Right now without the third-party app support, it doesn’t look like this. Then some of the features aren’t exactly new. Google has been talking about ‘contextual awareness’ around assistant for sometime now. Google Now on Tap was in fact designed around this whole idea of ‘contextual awareness’, and eventually it’s gotten integrated into the Google Assistant.

Google Now already shows information in the form of neat cards, and can read data from a number of third-party apps already. From flight alerts to when your online purchase will be delivered, Google Now is already doing that for a majority of Android phones. For Bixby to be the winner out here, it will need to do a lot more.