Samsung Bixby voice capabilities now available in the UK

Service for the Galaxy S8 range now rolled out to more than 200 countries, including Australia, Canada and South Africa 

Samsung’s Bixby voice capabilities for the Galaxy S8 smartphone range have now been made available in the UK and more than 200 countries.

In addition to South Korea and the US, consumers in countries such as Australia, Canada and South Africa can now use the service on the devices.

Bixby is currently available in US, English and Korean, with users now enabling it by pressing the Bixby button and updating the app. It can be activated by holding the dedicated button on the devices or by saying: “Hi Bixby.”

The service includes ‘Quick Commands’, a feature that enables users to create a custom voice command to use in place of a sequence of one or more commands. For example, they can use the command “good night” as a shortcut for “Turn on Do-not disturb mode, set an alarm for 6am and turn on blue light filter.”

Bixby also understands the way users ask questions and make requests. One scenario being that if they take a photo and tell it to “send the picture just taken to Dad,” it understands cross-application commands and will know which photo the user is referring to.

Multi-tasking

When an application becomes Bixby-enabled, it will support a number of tasks that the application is capable of performing using voice, touch or text.

Its integration is also built into the smartphone settings so users can make changes, such as setting the screen timeout or showing all notifications without interrupting what they are doing at the time.

Samsung will continue to expand Bixby’s voice capabilities to additional countries, languages, devices, features and third-party applications.

The Galaxy S8 and S8+ smartphones went on sale in the UK on April 28, with analysts labelling the range a “game-changer” that will return it to smartphone leadership.