Samsung introduced its personal digital assistant Bixby last year with the Galaxy S8. The voice assistant is yet to receive a major update but as our reviews have shown, it holds a lot of promise for software that's only in its first iteration.
Samsung introduced Bixby 2.0 three months ago at its developer conference in San Francisco, it said that this will be a “bold reinvention” of the Bixby platform. A new report out of China suggests that Bixby 2.0 will power effortless communication with Galaxy smartphones, enabling users to give one command after the other without having to say the “Hi Bixby” hotword every single time.
Bixby 2.0 may enable effortless communication with Galaxy smartphones
Say you want to ask Bixby what's the time right now in London. You say Hi Bixby and then follow it up with the relevant voice command. Now you want to ask what's the weather like there but right now you have to say the hotword again.
A China-based source who has been right on multiple accounts in the past claims that Bixby 2.0 will let users talk to the assistant continuously. This means that they may only have to say Hi Bixby once and will be able to effortlessly give follow-up voice commands to the assistant.
Samsung did say that Bixby 2.0 is going to transform basic digital assistants into an intelligence tool and that it's going to feature enhanced natural language capabilities. Allowing users to constantly speak to the assistant without requiring the hotword every single time or a tap on the on-screen Bixby button is really going to make life easier for them, particularly in situations where they can't hold the phone in their hands.
Unfortunately, Samsung is yet to reveal when Bixby 2.0 is going to be released. Today's report doesn't mention anything about availability as well. We've heard nothing so far to suggest that Samsung might introduce Bixby 2.0 with the Galaxy S9 even though it would make perfect sense for the company to do so.
