Prior to its official announcement, it was rumored that Samsung’s Bixby voice interface on the Galaxy S8 would have support for more than half a dozen languages. We now know that’s not the case. Bixby only has support for English and Korean at launch but according to information posted on Samsung’s own website, Bixby is going to be expanded in the fourth quarter of this year to additional markets with support for more languages.
The information comes from the FAQ section of Samsung Germany website which addresses a question about the availability of Bixby in this particular country. Samsung responded to that question by revealing that full Bixby functionality will be available in Germany in the fourth quarter of this year.
By full functionality, it might very well mean that Bixby will be able to accept commands spoken in the German language and also respond in the same language. This may be true for other markets as well where Samsung is planning to provide full Bixby support.
It certainly won’t be surprising to see the list of supported languages for Bixby expand over the coming months. It’s not known right now which markets Samsung is going to prioritize for this.
Bixby is going to debut with the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ both of which will start shipping on April 21st. Samsung has already confirmed that Bixby will eventually make its way to other devices as well, including but not limited to consumer electronics devices.