Just days after the Samsung Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ were revealed, the company’s mobile chief DJ Koh has announced that an updated version of the company’s digital assistant- Bixby 2.0- will be released for the devices in the second half of 2018. Bixby 2.0 was first unveiled back in October last year at the company’s developer conference in San Francisco. The company had announced that the second-gen version of Bixby would be geared towards smart home devices, but didn’t release any specific details regarding the same.
1. Designed for IoT Devices
At the recent announcement Koh also said, “Bixby won’t be tied to a specific device. The ultimate goal is to make it ubiquitous”.
2. Open Platform for Third-Party Developers
Bixby 2.0 will be built on an open platform allowing third-party developers to make use of the SDK. This will bring in a wave of new Bixby powered smart appliances from other manufacturers. Additionally, service providers will be able to add their services to Bixby which will expand their reach to a larger number of devices. Upon implementation, the feature will help developers write just one piece of code for Bixby, rather than reinventing their services for every specific device.
3. Integration for Android and Tizen Devices
During the initial announcement, Ji Soo Yi, VP Mobile Communications Business for Samsung, told reporters that Bixby 2.0 would feature a “one work on one platform” command structure. The updated command structure will allow Samsung to use Bixby across different operating systems like Android and Samsung’s Tizen. This will allow Samsung to include its light weight Tizen operating system in low-end devices and still provide complete Bixby functionality across the board.
4. Increased Language Support and Improved Voice Recognition
Bixby 2.0 is expected to feature better natural language recognition along with support for more regional languages. With the added functionality, Bixby will be able to differentiate between people, much like the Google Assistant, and provide contextual replies. The updated assistant will also feature enhanced natural language capabilities which will allow it to process complex commands. Samsung claims that Bixby 2.0, “can really get to know and understand not only who you are, but who members of your family are, and tailor its response and actions appropriately.”
While all the aforementioned features will be included on the software side, Project Ambience is a new hardware development which focuses on bringing Bixby 2.0 to supported devices. The company hasn’t revealed much information regarding the matter, but according to the original announcement, Project Ambience will make use of a small chip or dongle which will bring Bixby functionality to a number of different products.
SEE ALSO: Samsung’s Bixby 2.0 Could Launch With Galaxy Note 9 Later This Year
When it was first released back in May last year, Samsung’s digital assistant Bixby only supported Korean language input and was quite buggy to be honest. Even though the digital assistant received a lot of flak from the tech community at large, Samsung hasn’t given up on the platform and it has significantly improved over time. We even pitched Bixby against the Google Assistant and Siri in a series of different tests and although it wasn’t the best digital assistant out of the lot, it did have a unique set of features which were absent in the other two.
