Samsung Rolls Out Bixby Voice Worldwide But Service Only In English, Korean

Samsung’s Bixby voice assistant for the Galaxy S8 and galaxy S8 Plus is finally available worldwide. Bixby Voice is now being rolled out to more than 200 countries. Unfortunately, the service will only work in English and Korean languages for now.

“Now millions of customers worldwide have access to a new and intelligent way of interacting with their phone,” executive VP and head of R&D for Samsung's Mobile Business Injong Rhee said. “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.”

Bixby voice for the Galaxy S8 will be available to over 200 countries including the U.K., Australia, Canada and South Africa. Previously, only the United States and South Korea were able to use the voice capabilities of Bixby. Samsung says that it plans to continue expanding the capabilities of Bixby voice, as well as the number of languages that it’s able to understand.

To start using Bixby voice, Galaxy S8 users need to press the dedicated Bixby button on the left-hand side of the handset. This will trigger the voice assistant and users will simply have to give out a voice command, according to Android Authority.

Samsung says that users will be able to use Bixby voice to set an alarm, open apps, set reminders and adjust some phone settings. Users can also make Quick Commands, a feature that lets users customize a voice command to initiate a specific task.

Users can also ask Bixby questions and make requests. The Samsung voice assistant is capable of cross-application commands. For example, when users take a photo, they could simply ask Bixby to send that photo to a friend.

Although this news might sound great for everyone who were hoping to take advantage of Bixby voice, it’s a bit disappointing knowing that it only works in U.S. English and Korean. By comparison, Apple’s Siri can understand more than 20 languages, including Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, French, German, Italian and Spanish.

Google Assistant doesn’t have plenty of supported languages, but it has slowly been expanding. Most recently, Google Assistant was made available in German, Brazilian-Portuguese and Japanese. Later this year, it will also be able to speak in Italian, Spanish and Korean.

Bixby is obviously still in its infancy and Samsung needs to keep developing and improving it moving forward. When the South Korean phone maker first announced the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus earlier this year, there was a lot of hype surrounding its digital assistant.

Unfortunately, when Samsung’s flagship smartphone arrived in April, Bixby voice only worked in South Korea. It wasn’t until July when Samsung began rolling it out in the U.S. The delayed rollout in the U.S. was reportedly due to Bixby struggling to understand English since Samsung lacked the necessary amount of data.

If Samsung intends to teach Bixby other languages, it may take some more time. For now, Galaxy S8 users can at least try out Bixby voice in English and Korean.