Samsung to shutter S Voice, an early voice assistant service

Samsung is planning to phase out its voice assistant called S Voice. The service will reportedly be discontinued on June 1, 2020. This platform pre-dates the tech company’s Bixby voice assistant, which will remain in use.

S Voice has limited functionality compared with the conversational AI that are the current norm. It needed to first be launched from the S Voice app, and then could execute on basic commands such as placing a call or creating reminders.

S Voice hasn’t been shipped on a Samsung device in several years. Bixby made its debut alongside the Galaxy S8 smartphones in 2017. It’s unclear at this stage if the official end of S Voice will lead to more resources going toward Bixby’s development. Samsung has been an also-ran to date among voice assistants. Its first smart speaker finally seemed ready to emerge earlier this year, but turned out to be only as part of a bundle for Galaxy S20 pre-orders.

Anna Washenko