When it comes to digital assistants, Samsung Bixby is hardly a standout. The company has tried their best to push it on consumers, with new Samsung phones even launching with a dedicated Bixby button. In what may be the beginning of the end for Bixby, Samsung is discontinuing several AR features of the digital assistant.
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The augmented reality features that will no longer be supported has a wide range of functionality. For example, the Places feature overlaid map icons on Samsung’s camera to highlight local landmarks, restaurants, and stores to help with navigation. The Home Décor feature enabled you to add virtual furniture and appliances to your home to see what would fit in where. Other discontinued AR features include the Styling and Makeup features.
Interestingly, some other AR features are remaining. Bixby has a real-time translation feature as well as accessibility options like quick reader meant to help users with visual impairments by reading out text seen by the camera. These will seemingly still be available.
Bixby has been around since 2017 which Samsung launched alongside their flagship Samsung Galaxy S8. It was Samsung’s answer to Google Assistant and Apple’s Siri, although it could never deliver all the smart features that the aforementioned could. The slow shuttering of Bixby could be coming about as a result of Google’s negotiations with Samsung to push its own assistant on Android devices over Bixby. Google argues that Samsung users will get a lot more utility from the Assistant build for Android.
While Samsung gave it a good bash, Bixby has been languishing behind other contemporaries in the industry. They may bemoan the fact, but it is in the best interests of its users to replace it with a much better system like Google Assistant.
