Samsung Bixby
The introduction of Samsung’s very own Artificial Intelligence Assistant, Bixby, has been one of the most daring tasks the South Korean tech company has dazzled into ahead of the official the launch of latest flagship device, the Galaxy S8, and the S8 Plus variant.
The device will be the first to feature the intelligent assistant which has been taunted to be very powerful and most likely to displace the likes of Cortana from Microsoft, Siri from Apple and rival Alexa from Amazon.
There have been countless rumors regarding the Samsung’s Bixby and all of the rumors point to the fact that the intelligent assistant will be able to do more as it is rumored to have been integrated into the camera for Virtual Reality functionality. Earlier rumors regarding the assistant also held that the assistant through the camera would be able to direct users to online stores selling a particular item when the S8 camera is pointed at it.
However, Samsung is yet to substantiate most of the claims in the rumor mill, but the latest reports regarding the smart assistant hold that it will not be exclusive to the Galaxy S8 and the S8 Plus alone as the tech company is looking to spread the love and functionality provided by Bixby.
The South Korean company announced that the Samsung AI Assistant, Bixby, will be made available to a range of older devices although it failed to mention which devices will be getting the AI Assistant and when.
It is, however, most likely that the likes of the Galaxy S7 and its variants, S7 Edge, S6 and its variants, S6 Edge and S6 Edge Plus will be getting the smart assistant.
The release of Bixby on other Samsung devices is however speculated to be coming after April 21 which is the official date for the launching of the Snapdragon 835 and latest Exynos 8895 processor powered device.
Reports also indicated that the smart AI Assistant might not be coming to devices which lack support for the Android Nougat OS as latest tests indicated that the AI is built around support for the high-powered OS.
According to report, to get the Bixby working on older variants with support for the Android 7.0 Nougat OS, users must first install the Galaxy S8 launcher on their smartphones and then proceed to install and activate the Bixby apk file which will, in turn, activate the virtual assistant upon rebooting the phone.
Upon installation, Bixby can be accessed by swiping the screen left on the phone, and the method has been recorded to have worked perfectly on the Samsung Galaxy S7 device.
However, on the latest flagship device from Samsung, the Galaxy S8 and its variants come with a dedicated key for the smart AI Assistant.
Great news about Bixby asides drawing up maps, restaurants, and others is the ability to access third-party applications loaded on the smartphone along with the ability to use augmented reality to translate text, read QR codes, and also recognize landmarks.
The smart assistant is also reported to be capable of scanning texts in hard copy to soft copies through the integration of the Optical Character Recognition software.