‘Galaxy S8’ Latest News: Samsung flagship smartphone to feature Bixby virtual assistant

By Eamon J Jawatin | Jan 11, 2017 11:25 AM EST

South Korean-based Samsung has provided more evidence on the future service that will be available for their next flagship phone Samsung S8, following on from the discovery of Samsung's Bixby AI assistant, which was posted on their website.


The picture, which advertise three options on how to pay for goods: "Shopping, Mini and Bixby" was uploaded on its own website as part of promoting Samsung Pay service. Developed by Viv Labs, the new feature Bixby is believed to be a digital assistant based on voice commands similar to the existing S-Voice, but will be much more advanced - such as requesting to show its user pictures or videos that satisfy particular criteria, and it will work system-wide, according to Sam Mobile. Bixby is likely to replace S-Voice in the Galaxy S8.

Viv Labs was founded by Dag Kittlaus, Adam Cheyer and Chris Brigham, the team that spun out research from the SRI Artificial intelligence Center which led to another famous voice-based assistant called Siri which owned by Apple.

With Samsung accidentally confirming its voice assistant, alongside a growth in its contactless payment system, the South Korean company is standing up to Google's dominance of Android services with a defiant portfolio of software and services. How Bixby will work alongside Google Assistant - part of the Google Play Services - in any Galaxy device that uses the AI software remains to be seen.

The tech giant company also said that it will update most of the native apps with a new UI so they all will have a similar design, and that Galaxy S8's status bar will always be visible, making it easier without the need to swipe twice to access notifications and quick settings toggles, reported Forbes. Galaxy S8 is seen by many as the next weapon to outlast Apple's new released iPhone 7, based on the rivalry between the two companies. 

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