Samsung confirms Bixby integration coming to older Galaxy phones; activation by re-programming power button

Samsung Galaxy smartphones released after the Galaxy S3 and before the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ came with an in-house voice assistant known as S Voice. However, Samsung never put significant effort in improving it, eventually choosing to replace it with Bixby.

The Galaxy S8 and S8+ became the first from the company to ship pre-installed with Bixby digital assistant in place of S Voice. Still, Samsung didn’t immediately get rid of S Voice now that it had a better voice assistant in place.

But in a report published by Samsung-centric publication SamMobile in April, the company is set to discontinue S Voice beginning June 1.

Going forward, S Voice will become unusable on devices that have it on board. When prompted, users will see the message “I’m unable to process your request. Try again later” on the screen.

And now, reports just coming in claim that Samsung has plans to replace the old S Voice on Galaxy smartphones with the new Bixby assistant via a software update.

Yes, I would like to inform you that S Voice Service will be soon no longer be available and will be getting upgraded to Bixby.

By all means, Samsung Bixby is an upgrade over S Voice. Sure, the latter could still perform various tasks through voice commands, but it’s not as conversational as Bixby or even Google Assistant.

Apparently, owners of older devices using S Voice will be able to re-program the power button and use it to launch Bixby once they have received the said software update.

When exactly this software update can be expected is only known to Samsung. But we will keep an eye on the story and update you whenever we have fresh developments.

Thanks for the tip, Ashutosh Dubey!

PiunikaWeb started as purely an investigative tech journalism website with main focus on ‘breaking’ or ‘exclusive’ news. In no time, our stories got picked up by the likes of Forbes, Foxnews, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Engadget, The Verge, Macrumors, and many others. Want to know more about us? Head here.