Although Samsung has reason to be pleased about its slick new Galaxy S8 phone, the company wasn’t able to ship the device with arguably its most important feature when it went on sale last month: the Bixby voice-activated assistant.
ZDNet reports that the feature is now live for Galaxy S8 owners in Samsung’s home market of South Korea. That’s a relief, as it could mean that Bixby will soon be available across the world.
With Bixby, you’ll be able to use your voice to command your phone to do things like make calls, set alarms, schedule calendar appointments, and launch apps. There’s a separate component that surfaces contextual information on your home screen, which is already live.
It isn’t yet clear exactly when Bixby’s voice features will roll out to other markets. The Wall Street Journal previously noted that it would arrive by the end of May; now
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Until it’s activated, you’ll probably want to figure out some way to put the dedicated Bixby hardware button to use: perhaps set it up to launch Google Now.
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