File photo: A woman takes a picture of the Samsung Galaxy S8+ smartphone with a Galaxy S7 during the Samsung Unpacked event in New York City, U.S. March 29, 2017. (REUTERS/Brendan McDermid)
Good news, Galaxy S8 owners. Nearly three months after Samsung's latest flagship smartphone launched, one of the device's most highly anticipated features is finally available: Bixby voice capabilities.
The digital personal assistant—which is similar to Apple's Siri or Amazon's Alexa—can finally handle English-language voice queries on the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus.
Since the Galaxy S8 launched on April 21, English-speaking owners have only been able to interact with Bixby by tapping on the screen. You can still press the dedicated Bixby button on the side of your Galaxy S8 or Galaxy S8 Plus to interact with it, but now you can also say "Hi Bixby" and then speak your command; no tap required.
Bixby is "fully integrated" with Galaxy S8's built-in apps, including gallery, phone, contacts, settings, camera, and reminders.
"Users can ask Bixby to complete simple tasks, like turning on the flashlight or taking a selfie, or complex tasks, like 'remind me to pick up milk at the grocery store,' or 'find photos I took in Spain and create an album called Vacation,'" Samsung says. "Through iterative deep learning technology, Bixby can improve over time to recognize the user's different preferences and ways of speaking."
Besides English, Bixby can also speak Korean. Samsung plans to "continually expand" the service to support "additional languages and devices in the near future."
This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.
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