Bixby, for all intents and purposes, has fallen by the wayside as far as Samsung’s priorities are concerned. It still exists on Galaxy phones and tablets and keeps getting updates, such as the UI makeover it received recently, but it’s clear that Samsung’s initial fervor for Bixby has turned lukewarm. Perhaps the biggest indication of that is the fact that Samsung’s smart Bixby speaker is still limited to select customers in the company’s home country, something we were reminded of today as the Galaxy Home Mini received a new software update.
Hey Sammy, when’s the Galaxy Home (Mini) going on sale?
Yes, development on the Galaxy Home Mini is still ongoing, and the latest software update for it is actually rather interesting: It introduces the option for users to wake the speaker up by saying Hey Sammy instead of Hi Bixby. Every Samsung fan has probably called the company Sammy at some point or the other, and it’s great to see Samsung recognizing that and making it an official callsign for using its voice assistant. Sadly, the feature’s out of reach for most of those fans, as the Galaxy Home Mini is still not available anywhere outside South Korea.
And it makes us wonder: Is Samsung’s smart speaker ever going to make its way to other markets, like the United States, and is it even going to be sold as a standalone product? Last we heard, Samsung had no plans for doing the latter and was only offering the Home Mini as a pre-order offer for Galaxy S20 customers, and it hasn’t said anything about the speaker’s release since then. However, we’ve reached out to the company for a comment — both on the Home Mini’s release and whether the Hey Sammy wakeup command will come to Bixby on smartphones and tablets — and will let you know once we hear back, so stay tuned.
