Samsung kills off its first voice assistant, prepping major Gear S3 and Gear Sport update
Many of you may not remember this, but Samsung actually released a Siri alternative long before Amazon and Google joined the virtual assistant space they ended up dominating fairly quickly. Obviously, the reason why S Voice probably slipped your mind is that Samsung never quite managed to get its rookie AI-based digital assistant effort off the ground despite pre-installing the app on all of the company's incredibly popular high-end smartphones from 2012 through 2016.
Samsung replaced S Voice with Bixby on 2017's Galaxy S8 flagship series and never looked back, although it's still difficult to consider the company's sophomore virtual assistant effort a runaway hit. To its credit, the world's largest handset vendor is not throwing in the towel a second time... just yet, trying hard to make Bixby happen and indeed expanding its capabilities, albeit at a much slower pace than hardcore Samsung fans would desire.
With all of that in mind, it should come as no shock that the company is planning to put the final nail in S Voice's coffin before long. As noticed by the folks over at SamMobile (who else?), a "support alert" dated April 1 (no joke) confirms that the end is near for Samsung's unpopular voice assistant. Specifically, the service is set for termination on June 1, which means you "may encounter errors" if you try to use the app past that point (not to mention that you might be some sort of a masochist).
This will naturally only affect you if you still own an oldie like the Galaxy Note 5, Note 4, Galaxy S7, S7 Edge, S6, S5, Galaxy A3, A5, A7, A8, A9 and so on or a wearable device like the Galaxy Watch, Watch Active, Gear S3, or Gear Sport. Of course, the Galaxy Watch and Watch Active are already compatible with Bixby after recent software updates, while the older Gear S3 and Gear Sport models are set to join that club "when S Voice ends."
In other words, owners of the 2016-released Samsung Gear S3 and 2017's Gear Sport have yet another upgrade to look forward to. While we'd certainly like to tell you this is bound to be a game changer, Bixby doesn't work great on phones and it's even worse more mediocre on smartwatches.
Still, Samsung's software support for its ancient Tizen-powered wearables remains essentially unrivaled. And yes, some voice assistance is definitely better than no voice assistance. Besides, maybe the Bixby-enabling update will also bring something else to the table in terms of new features or at least performance improvements of sorts. Fingers crossed, everybody!
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