Samsung’s Bixby Works On Galaxy S7, Older Devices Running Android 7.0 Nougat

When Samsung unveiled the Galaxy S8 and S8+ to the public last Wednesday, it also introduced its new AI assistant, called Bixby. The Siri rival basked in the spotlight as Samsung officials talked about what makes it stand out and different from other smart assistants during the Unpacked event. Bixby is rumored to come to other devices, but it’s hard to imagine how it would be implemented in older devices that do not have the dedicated hardware button found on the new flagship phones.

Interestingly, some developers have successfully deployed Bixby on older Galaxy smartphones, most especially on the 1-year-old Galaxy S7. On the Android website XDA-Developers, software developers shared that hey got Bixby working on their Android smartphones with the help of Bixby’s Android Package Kit (APK) that was shared by user takerhbk. In order for the developer to create the APK, he first made it work on top of the Galaxy S8’s launcher, which was leaked online early this week. Takerhbk managed to do it, and this led the developer to release the APK file for Bixby on the website.

Since Samsung does not plan on bringing Bixby to the Google Play Store, developers previously do not have any means of bringing the smart assistant to older Samsung phones. Hence, the APK shared by takerhbk was good news to other developers who really wanted to run Bixby on their devices. XDA-Developers member Mishaal Rahman revealed that Bixby works on his Galaxy S7. It was also found out that the software only works with Samsung phones running Android 7.0 Nougat.

READ: Samsung Galaxy S8 hands-on review

Samsung did not respond to VentureBeat when asked to comment about the leaked APK. While there has been no confirmation whether Bixby is indeed coming to older Samsung phones, many are hoping that the South Korea tech giant would consider bringing it to not-so-dated devices. However, it’s good to know that even without Bixby, owners of Samsung devices running Android Nougat and Marshmallow are getting Google’s AI assistant Google Assistant. In addition, Amazon has already started offering its Alexa voice assistant to phones, and Microsoft’s Cortana is now on the Play Store. It goes without saying that consumers will eventually be having access to all AI assistants save for Apple’s Siri that is only exclusive to its products.

Meanwhile, it was found out last Friday that Bixby is going to support many third-party apps at launch. During Samsung’s press briefing in Canada, it was found that the early version of Bixby has support for a couple of third-party apps like Facebook, YouTube, Uber, LinkedIn, Twitter and Foursquare.