Apart from unveiling its new foldable smartphones, Wear OS smartwatches, and wireless earbuds, Samsung also announced a few updates related to its software design, brand partnerships, and Bixby. While the company has toned down marketing its digital voice assistant over the past few years, Samsung is still improving Bixby’s design and features. The South Korean firm has now announced that Bixby will get faster on its new devices.
Samsung mentioned during its event that Bixby will work 35% faster on the Galaxy Z Flip 3 and the Galaxy Z Fold 3. This improvement is a result of on-device voice processing rather than going through Samsung’s servers. On-device voice processing is done via the NPU (Neural Processing Unit) that is embedded in modern-day smartphone processors. The company hasn’t revealed whether this improvement will come to other older Galaxy devices, though.
This new improvement is similar to what Apple has been doing with some Siri requests through on-device voice processing, starting with iOS 15. Even Google has been processing some Google Assistant requests right on the devices since 2019. Some Alexa smart speakers can do that as well. As NPUs inside chipsets keep on improving in the future, Bixby could become even faster on upcoming smartphones.
Bixby recently received a UI makeover. The digital voice assistant now takes up less screen real estate, similar to the newer Google Assistant and Siri designs. Samsung also launched Bixby in new markets like India. However, it remains to be seen how many people find it useful since all Android smartphones already have Google Assistant which is better at understanding voice and answering requests.
