Samsung’s voice assistant Bixby was first launched in South Korea several months ago. The company eventually released it for users in the United States as well. It’s certainly going to roll out Bixby in other markets across the globe but Samsung is yet to confirm when it will do that.
We recently reported that there’s a possibility that Samsung is preparing Bixby Voice for a global roll out. It would make sense for the company to do so. Galaxy S8 owners in markets where Bixby isn’t available have already been made to wait for a very long time. It’s about time that they get access to this feature.
Samsung is rolling out updates for a bunch of Bixby apps today across the globe. The apps that have been updated today include Bixby, Bixby PLM, Bixby Wakeup, Bixby Dictation and Bixby Global Action. We’ve received reports of these updates from the United Kingdom, South Africa, India, Netherlands, Germany and more.
It seems that Samsung is only rolling out app updates for now and it’s yet to flip the server-side switch which will enable Bixby for users in these markets.
One UK-based user who received these updates reached out to Samsung over Twitter and was told that Bixby Voice isn’t available in the UK at this point in time. Our own UK-based team members have confirmed that despite the update, Bixby Dictation isn’t working as yet.
Samsung should really be more clear about its global launch plans for Bixby. This confusion isn’t helping anybody.
Update: One of our team members in Germany is able to use dictation feature, though he finds that the transcription quality leaves a lot to be desired. Do try on your own device with Samsung’s default keyboard by holding down the Bixby key to start dictating.
