The Bixby voice assistant will also speak Italian and can be used in Samsung's new smartphones. Here's how it will work
Samsung's voice assistant Bixby is ready to speak Italian. The South Korean company has announced the new update that will finally be released in Italy on its top-of-the-line smartphones, including the Galaxy S10. To make it work, you'll therefore need to have a phone running Android 9 Pie.
It seems that the company is also working on a special update of the OneUI user interface for previous smartphones. Samsung's voice assistant aims to catch up with its direct competitors Google Assistant and Siri. To this end, the company has designed a wide range of integrated skills for Bixby, but it has also relied on partnerships with third parties, such as the one with Skyscanner for searching and booking airline flights or the one with Yoox for online shopping for clothing and accessories.
How Bixby works in Italian
Those who are already familiar with the use of other digital assistants such as Alexa, Siri and Google Assistant will certainly have no problems getting Bixby to work. What's new compared to its competitors is that users can choose to have Bixby speak in a male or female voice, which in Italy will be called Andrea and Angela, respectively. Despite the change of voice, the functions are the same. Samsung's personal assistant will integrate with the brand's wide range of products: smartphones, but also smart TVs and home appliances.
Samsung's real challenge is to allow its digital assistant to speak all languages informally and fluently, and with Italian, the stakes are raised. In fact, ours is a particularly rich and complex language, but fortunately, just like with other voice assistants, even with the one produced by the South Korean company it will be possible to carry out training for voice recognition of articulated words and phrases.
In conclusion, Bixby will now speak eight languages: English, English-American, Korean, Spanish, German, Chinese, French and Italian. In contrast, Siri and Google Assistant speak about twenty. Amazon Alexa knows far fewer but boasts numerous skills and is the first to have landed in Italy, so it has an advantageous position on the market. Moreover, Bixby can't even rely on a smart-home device system: Galaxy Home, Samsung's smart speaker, is still in the works.
Compatible Devices
Bixby will be available for all devices coming soon. First of all, we will find it on the new Galaxy S10 range, but also on Galaxy 9, S9 and S9+ and unexpectedly also in Galaxy Note 8, S8 and even on S8+. Finally, as already mentioned Samsung is also working on an update that will allow Bixby to be used on other smartphones.