Samsung has announced they're killing off the S Voice assistant on June 1 this year
First reported by SamMobile, Samsung have announced that it'll be killing off its older voice assistant, S Voice, later this year on June 1.
Samsung have then confirmed this report by posting an update on its support website about the discontinuing of S Voice.
It was developed to take on the likes of Siri from Apple and launched back in 2012 on the Galaxy S III, however it never caught on and wasn't able to have conversations like Google Assistant and Siri can. Instead, it just takes simple commands and actions them for you, such as 'Call David', 'Send a text to Mum'.
It could launch applications too: 'Open Camera'. Although this seems pointless as you had to open the S Voice app to say the command (or say 'Hi Galaxy') and then wait for it to be executed, so it would've been quicker to just open the app yourself.
As S Voice wasn't a huge hit and wasn't designed to answer questions in a conversation type of way (Google Assistant and Siri can!), it was placed on the back-burner when Bixby was born on April 2017 on the Galaxy S8.
As a result of Bixby, there's not really any point of Samsung supporting 2 voice assistants and what's more, S Voice was available on older devices and many people would've upgraded by now.
If you open or attempt to say 'Hi Galaxy" or open the S Voice app after 1 June, you'll receive an on-screen error message saying: "I’m unable to process your request. Try again later”.
S Voice is still on a number of smartphones from Samsung:
- the A range: Galaxy A3, A5, A7, A8 and A9
- the Note range: Galaxy Note 2, 3, 4 and 5
- the S range: Galaxy S3, S4, S5, S6 and S6 edge
It was also on a few older tablets - the Galaxy Tab 3 and 4 and Galaxy Tab S8.4 and a few of Samsung's wearable smartwatches like the Gear, Gear 2, Galaxy Watch and the Galaxy Watch Active. Some smartwatches will require you to upgrade the S Voice app to Bixby whereas others will offer the Bixby app when S Voice is discontinued at the start of next month.
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