Samsung Galaxy Watch Will Have Bixby Voice Assistant Support

Samsung is expected to release the Gear S4 smartwatch this year and it looks like it might be a lot smarter than its predecessors. A new rumor claims that the Gear S4 will arrive with Samsung’s Bixby digital assistant.

The Samsung Gear S4, which is expected to be called the Galaxy Watch, won’t feature a dedicated physical Bixby button. Instead, Bixby will simply be replacing S Voice on the smartwatch, which means that users will just have to press the home button to call on Bixby, according to SamMobile. It’s also possible that the digital assistant can also be called through a “Hi Bixby” voice command.

Samsung’s Bixby digital assistant was pretty much late in the game. Google Assistant was already dominating smartphones, while Apple’s Siri has been on iPhones since 2011. Samsung debuted Bixby last year on the Galaxy S8 and S8+, and it even has its own dedicated physical button on one side of the flagship devices. Bixby had a slow start to say the least. Although Bixby Vision and Bixby Home were both functional in the U.S. at launch, Bixby Voice was delayed as Samsung had trouble teaching the AI to learn English.

For the Galaxy Watch, SamMobile claims that Bixby voice will be fully operational when the smartwatch is launched. Samsung is expected to unveil the Bixby 2.0 update alongside the Galaxy Note 9 next month and it’s expected that the same version of the digital assistant will be running on the smartwatch.

Bixby 2.0 is said to arrive with upgraded and enhanced natural language process and improved noise resistance, and it also provides quicker response times. Viv is also expected to be included to Bixby 2.0 and it would allow developers to add more app integrations. Viv is an AI created by the founder of Apple’s Siri and it was acquired by Samsung in 2016.

Including Bixby in the Galaxy Watch seems to make a lot of sense considering Samsung’s long-term plans. The South Korean company is investing a lot in Bixby because it wants it to be in all of its IoT products by 2020.

So, will Samsung’s next smartwatch be called Gear S4 or Galaxy Watch? It’s been discovered recently that a logo for the Galaxy Watch has been trademarked by Samsung in South Korea, accoridng to Engadget. This is almost certainly a guarantee that the Gear S4 will be released under this name. It’s being heavily speculated that the smartwatch might actually run Google’s Wear OS (formerly Android Wear) instead of Samsung’s own Tizen OS. Renaming the Gear S line makes sense since Samsung’s most popular Android phones are already being sold under the Galaxy brand.

Samsung might announce the Galaxy Watch during IFA 2018 in Berlin, which is scheduled to kick off on Aug. 31. The company is also expected to announce the Galaxy Note 9 and Bixby 2.0 on Aug. 9 in New York City.