Samsung's Bixby finally comes to India

Samsung announced that its digital voice assistant, Bixby is now available for customers in India. The feature was first available in South Korea, following which it arrived in the US and is currently supported on Galaxy S8, Galaxy S8+ and Galaxy Note 8 mobile phones. The company said that Bixby Voice can be used in English(US) in India and is optimized to understand the local Indian accents.

"Keeping in mind the diversity in Indian accents and our commitment to 'Make for India', Bixby has been optimized to understand Indian accents," said Asim Warsi, Senior Vice President, Mobile Business, Samsung India.

Bixby, which was launched across several US and European markets earlier this year, offers four essential features to customers - the ability to talk to Bixby, take pictures and let it make sense of it, use it to set reminders, and receive recommendations for products, foods, and things to read. The virtual assistant also offers "Quick Commands" feature that allows users to create a custom voice command to use in place of a sequence of one or more commands. For example, the company said, one can use the command "good night" as a shortcut for "Turn on Do-not-disturb mode, set an alarm for 6:00 AM and turn on a blue light filter."

Another important feature of the Bixby Voice is performing tasks in different applications. When any mobile phone becomes Bixby-enabled, then it can perform almost every task the application is capable of performing using voice. Bixby's deep integration is also built into the smartphone settings so that you can change phone options such as setting screen timeout without any interruption.

Consumers can activate Bixby by holding the dedicated button on the Galaxy Note 8, Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ smartphones, or by simply saying, “Hi, Bixby.”