With the recent release of Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+, Samsung's assistant Bixby took center stage as well. This is Samsung's answer to Apple's Siri which has been widely used by Apple users. Now, it is not just about having a battle of mobile devices, even voice-activated virtual assistants also joined in the fight.
Samsung's Bixby is the Korean tech giant's break into a surging market of voice-activated virtual assistants joining the ranks of Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant, and Cortana. Bixby is different in such a way that it uses voice commands as opposed to touch to control handsets or applications. It also integrates location awareness and image recognition.
The integrated camera enables the users to identify buildings like famous tourist sites to access websites. All they have to do is take a photo and will be immediately processed for the required information needed.
It sure does have a lot more to offer, however, Bixby is still considered a work in progress according to Bob O'Donnell, an analyst and consultant with Technalysis Research. It is indeed an impressive innovation especially with its use of image recognition and context awareness. It did add new twists that were not seen before as he added. With all these interesting features, it still needs to be infused with Samsung's Viv.
Bixby will face tough competitions from established players such as Siri, Cortana, and much more. According to Richard Windsor, a contributing writer for Radio Free Mobile blog, it may have serious competition against Google Assistant as it will be in the home button of the newly launched phone (both Google Assistant and Bixby are available in S8 and S8+). Competition happens in the same flagship phone.
With Bixby, we've built intelligence into the camera, so it understands what we’re seeing. #UnboxYourPhone
— Samsung Mobile (@SamsungMobile) March 29, 2017
Bixby is considered a standout and is somehow different. Instead of asking for directions, movie schedules, and weather updates, users can ask Bixby to change the settings of the phone. However, Siri is still considered better as there are still many functions that don't work with Bixby. Questions like the age of a celebrity or something about geography may not be answered yet.
The competition between Siri and Bixby ensues. Apple's Siri is already established and is getting a steady stream of updates while Samsung's Bixby just recently joined the competition. It sure has a long way to go to be in direct competition but it will soon be a worthy opponent as it gets developed and improved more and more.
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