Samsung is pulling the plug on its S Voice assistant, the company’s first attempt to compete with Apple’s Siri, on June 1 of this year. In reality, Samsung itself pushed S Voice aside with the launch of its new assistant, Bixby, a few years ago. But now the company is making it official. Bye-bye S Voice.
The news, which was reported by SamMobile, can be found on a Samsung support page. Given that Samsung has been including Bixby in the place of S Voice when shipping its new phones, it’s likely that the majority of Samsung users won’t be affected by the decision. Nonetheless, Samsung wearable users might notice a difference, as the smartwatches Gear S3 and Gear Sport do currently run S Voice.
These smartwatches, however, will receive a software update that will replace S Voice with Bixby once support for S Voice ends.
Although S Voice wasn’t a conversational voice assistant, meaning it couldn’t answer questions like Siri or Google Assistant can nowadays, it could carry out a variety of tasks in response to voice commands. These included calling people, setting reminders, carrying out Internet searches and telling you what time it is.
The Samsung support page states that phones that have the S Voice icon on the applications screen will be affected, although it will also affect some tablets, according to SamMobile.
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Galaxy A3, A5, A7, A8, A9
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Galaxy Note FE
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Galaxy Note 2, Galaxy Note 3, Galaxy Note 4, Galaxy Note 5
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Galaxy S3, Galaxy S4, Galaxy S5, Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 edge, Galaxy 7, Galaxy S7 edge
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Galaxy W
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Galaxy Tab 4
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Galaxy Tab 4 8.0/10.1
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Galaxy Tab S8.4 and S10.5
Per 9to5Google, besides the smartwatches, none of the other devices will receive updates to support Bixby. If you own one of these devices and are looking for a voice assistant to replace S Voice, you can always try Google Assistant.