The company is positioning this is a “sneak peak” for the feature that was initially planned to debut on its new flagship phones. Starting this week, a select number of Galaxy S8 and S8+ can sign up to be among the first in the U.S. to test it out.
The company made it clear between the devices’ announcement and ship date that they would be launching with an incomplete version of its new in-house Alexa/Siri competitor, due to issues with the English language version. The Bixby that did arrive on the device sported a few fun tricks like image recognition and barcode scanning, but was mostly woefully incomplete.
Samsung’s still working on some tweaks here, using this limited launch to basically do some public beta testing. The company didn’t have a lot to say about the closed launch, aside from reiterating some of its grandiose plans for making Bixby, “an integral part of our connected ecosystem,” according to the company’s CTO.
