While Samsung's incomplete Bixby virtual assistant may have its very own dedicated button of the Galaxy S8 and S8+ handsets, many owners would rather remap the button as a camera button instead. The alleged Bixby smart speaker has apparently been shelved, but that doesn't mean that Samsung is giving up on its attempt to push its virtual assistant on its customers, with the latest rumor saying that the company is developing a set of Bixby-powered wireless earphones, ala Apple's AirPods.
According to the Korean news outlet, Etnews, Samsung has apparently developed a way to of isolating ambient noise from the user's voice, aka noise canceling by using the human body to extract noise. Perhaps it's something similar to the bone conduction technology found in some headphones? Regardless, users will be able to access Bixby by use of their voices.
Current thinking is that the wireless earphones will be ready around the time that the Galaxy Note 8 is announced, which we now know is on August 23rd, so just a little less than a month to go if the report is correct. The Bixby-powered earphones may also be included in the box with the Galaxy Note 8, giving users every opportunity to use the virtual assistant.
Before you get too excited, an unnamed Samsung executive has apparently stated that the Bixby-powered wireless earphones aren't official, and would not be drawn on a progress report. Basically, this sounds like the Bixby department has been tasked to develop new ways of getting the virtual assistant a wider audience and to develop some sort of ecosystem for it, and the smart speaker and these wireless earphones are the results of some spitballing. If the device does actually come to market, unlike the smart speaker that would have gone head-to-head with Google's Home and Amazon's Echo devices, it's possible that we may see Bixby Voice become available outside of the US and Korea with the launch of the Galaxy Note 8.
Source: Etnews
Via: PhoneArena
