I’m sure that by now many of you have heard rumors that Samsung is building a new virtual assistant for the Galaxy S8. It would be similar to what Apple offers with Siri and Amazon with Alexa but it remains to be seen how Samsung’s new assistant will stack up against the competition. It’s believed to be called Bixby once it’s ready for release with the Galaxy S8 but the handset itself might not arrive early as previously believed. A new report suggests that Samsung is going to delay the Galaxy S8 release until April 2017.
Samsung acquired Viv Labs a few weeks ago, it’s a started founded by the people behind Siri. Viv is developing a new artificial intelligence platform that’s going to power this virtual assistant for Samusng’s next-generation flagship smartphone.
Citing people familiar with the matter, The Wall Street Journal reports that Samsung might not announce the Galaxy S8 until April next year. Apparently, it’s going to run additional quality tests to ensure that the next flagship doesn’t suffer the same fate as the Galaxy Note 7. Perhaps that’s why the company needs all the additional time.
The report also reiterated that the Galaxy S8 features Bixby but it mentions an interesting possibility. It’s claimed that the Galaxy S8 is going to have a dedicated hardware button that users will press only when they need to bring up Bixby. This is possible on iOS devices that support Siri though it merits mentioning here that it’s only a long press of the home button that brings her up on iOS, that may not be the case with the Galaxy S8 since it may not have a home button altogether.
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