Samsung Bixby Personal Assistant Arrives In UK

Samsung’s Bixby voice activated personal assistant is now available in the UK, although users will have to avoid using any British colloquialisms as it only supports US English for the time being.

Bixby is Samsung’s answer to Siri, Cortana and Google Assistant and debuted earlier this year in South Korea with the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ smartphone.

A delayed US launch followed shortly after, but the Korean manufacturer has now expanded Bixby to 200 countries, albeit in just two languages.

Samsung Bixby UK

Bixby’s ultimate goal is to make it more natural and simpler to interact with a smartphone through custom voice commands, deep integration with the Samsung device, and machine learning which adjusts to the user’s preferences and habits. Bixby also understands cross-application commands, and developers can include support in their software.

The assistant is currently only supported by the Galaxy S8, which has a dedicated Bixby button, but Samsung has plans for more smartphones and other devices such as smart TVs. It has also said it plans more languages in the immediate future too.

“Now millions of customers worldwide have access to a new and intelligent way of interacting with their phone,” said Injong Rhee,Head of R&D, Software and Services at Samsung Mobile.

“The expansion of Bixby’s voice capabilities is an initial step in the continued rollout of Bixby functionality. In the future, Bixby will have the learning power to offer more intelligent and personalized interactions and seamless connections across more devices.”

The next device to support Bixby could well be the Samsung Galaxy Note 8. The follow up to the disastrous Galaxy Note 7 phablet , which was subject to a global recall and withdrawal following reports of exploding batteries, is set to be unveiled later this week.

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