SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA – July 19, 2017 – Today, Samsung is taking another step forward towards helping people get more out of their connected lives by introducing Bixby voice capabilities for U.S. English in the United States and Korea. Bixby’s added functionality will let users seamlessly navigate their phones and easily switch between voice commands, touch, vision and text. Bixby is an intelligent interface available on the Galaxy S8 and S8+ that makes interacting with your device, services and apps more instinctive and seamless.
Due to a rich legacy of mobile innovation, Samsung is uniquely positioned to offer a mobile experience and solutions that seamlessly integrate with, and power, its devices. As the heart of Samsung’s offerings, Bixby’s intelligent interface was designed to power users’ devices, apps and services, allowing easy control of smartphones and beyond.
With full voice capabilities for U.S. English, Bixby can help users get more out of their connected lives. With voice capabilities, Galaxy S8 and S8+ users can easily activate voice commands to get more done in their day – simply and efficiently. Users can ask Bixby to complete simple tasks, like turning on the flashlight or taking a selfie, or complex tasks, like “remind me to pick up milk at the grocery store,” or “find photos I took in Spain and create an album called ‘Vacation.’”
At launch, Bixby will be fully integrated across core Samsung apps, so almost anything you could do with touch or typing, you can now do with your voice, including multi-step, and cross-app requests. Support for additional native and third-party apps will be available via Bixby Labs, which includes select applications that are offering preliminary integration with Bixby. Because Bixby is deeply integrated into the device – rather than in a standalone application - users can easily switch between voice, touch or text commands, providing a unique experience over current voice assistants on the market.
“At Samsung, we are dedicated to creating the best possible user experience for our customers. That’s why we designed Bixby – it’s an intelligent interface that allows you to do more things with your phone. We want to offer a truly multimodal experience, so that users can interact with their phone in many different ways – through sight, touch, typing or voice – all of the most natural ways to interact with the world, available on your smartphone,” says Injong Rhee, Executive Vice President, Head of R&D, Software and Services of Mobile Communications Business, Samsung Electronics. “And as the Bixby ecosystem grows, it will use its completeness, context awareness and cognitive tolerance to evolve from a smartphone interface to the interface for your life,” he continues.
Voice capabilities for Bixby can be activated by pushing the dedicated Bixby hardware button located on the side of the Galaxy S8 and S8+, or by simply saying “Hi Bixby.” Bixby understands natural language, so users can complete tasks by using everyday speech, rather than pre-set and inflexible commands. Through iterative deep learning technology, Bixby can improve over time to recognize the user’s different preferences and ways of speaking.
Galaxy S8 and S8+ users in the U.S. can start using Bixby’s voice service immediately by updating the application to the latest software version. Bixby’s voice capabilities are currently available in Korean and U.S. English in South Korea and the United States on the Galaxy S8 and S8+. Samsung will continuously expand this service with additional languages and devices in the near future.
