It is official now, the much hyped Samsung Bixby won't have any voice functionalities whatsoever at launch. It was a surprising decision by Samsung to exclude a major part of the AI personal assistant experience from the S8 and the S8+, after marketing the missing feature as one of the main selling points of the Galaxy S8 series. We know that this cannot exactly be a voluntary decision as it clearly reflects very poorly on the company's recently tarnished image, but the question is; why advertise something that isn't even ready?

Samsung has promised that the missing features from Bixby will be making their way onto select flagship smartphones by spring 2017 in the US, but that is a vague and disappointing declaration to say the least. However, Bixby will still have Vision, Home and Reminder features active and working on the S8 and S8+ on launch. It makes you think if marketing Bixby in the way that they did was a mistake. I mean, to add an extra non-reprogrammable hardware button to your flagship device for a service that isn't even finished yet, sounds like a strange and somewhat stupid decision for a company as big as Samsung is.

Saikat Kar (tech-enthusiast)