Samsung Galaxy S8 to Launch Without Bixby Voice on April 21

One of the biggest software additions to Samsung's Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ smartphones is the Bixby digital assistant, but now the company has revealed that the AI-powered assistant will be missing one key feature at its global launch on April 21. According to the statement provided by the South Korean company, the new flagship smartphones will be missing Bixby Voice at their global launch on April 21. This effectively means that Bixby will lack voice controls when the phones launch later this month.

In an official update, Samsung has reportedly clarified that the new smartphones in the Galaxy line up will launch with Bixby features including Vision, Home, and Reminder. However, the company says that Bixby Voice will be made available in US in spring. "With its intelligent interface and contextual awareness, Bixby will make your phone more helpful by assisting in completing tasks, telling you what you're looking at, learning your routine and remembering what you need to do. Key features of Bixby, including Vision, Home and Reminder, will be available with the global launch of the Samsung Galaxy S8 on April 21. Bixby Voice will be available in the U.S. on the Galaxy S8 later this spring," Samsung said in its statement as per a report by Engadget.

Notably, the digital assistant currently supports only English and Korean languages.

Last month Samsung launched its Bixby assistant, which helps users with features like image recognition and location awareness among other things. It can be accessed with the help of a dedicated button on Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ smartphones. However, later on it was learned that there was a way to customise this key to launch any app of user's choice. As many users might prefer Google Assistant simply because of its support for many more languages, this button can be customised to launch Google's AI-based digital assistant as well.