Samsung's S-Voice Is Shutting Down On June 1st

Samsung is reportedly shutting off the servers for its S-Voice voice assistant on June 1, 2020, "at which point Samsung's original voice assistant will stop attempting to respond to your voice queries," reports Ars Technica. From the report: S-Voice arose in the early days of voice assistants, when Android OEMs were scrambling to photocopy Apple's Siri voice assistant, which launched in 2011. Samsung licensed the same underlying technology for S-Voice that Apple originally used for Siri -- Nuance Communication's voice recognition -- and set about building its Siri sibling. S-Voice was Samsung's chosen voice assistant for its smartphones until it rebooted its voice efforts with the launch of "Bixby" in 2017. Samsung's Bixby project initially grew out of an acquisition of Viv Labs, a voice-assistant company founded by members of the original Siri team (see a pattern here?).

The Galaxy S8 and every device after it launched with Bixby and not S-Voice, so this shutdown should only effect older devices. SamMobile hunted down a list of applicable devices, saying "The affected models that have the S Voice icon on the app screen include the Galaxy A3, A5, A7, A8, A9, Galaxy Note FE, Galaxy Note 2, 3, 4, 5, Galaxy S3, 4, S5, S6, S6 edge in addition to the Galaxy Note Pro 12.2, Galaxy W, Galaxy Tab 4, Galaxy Tab 4 8.0/10.1, Galaxy Tab S8.4 and S10.5.

Bixby

[srwood]

Now if only something similar will happen to Bixby.

Re:

[AndyKron]

Bill died almost twenty years ago...

Re: Bixby

[brunes69]

The only possible explanation I can offer for why Bixby still exists is that it must work better in foreign languages and markets than Google Assistant does. It's the only reason I can think of, because Bixby is laughably horrible compared to Google Assistant, which Samsung phones already have... So why dump tens of millions a year down the toilet with Bixby???

Just say NO to S

[AndyKron]

That was one of the first things I turned off.

Re:Just say NO to S[amsung]

[shanen]

My fuzzy memory concurs. There were a couple of other pieces of Samsung software that were terrible and made worse than terrible by the lack of support. Bean counters at work, obviously. As soon as a company refers anything to ZenDesk, you can abandon all hope of satisfaction.

Actually I had a more recent encounter with Samsung. I am completely befuddled how such a company can get any repeat business. My phone company is trying to force me to switch to a Samsung (which was related to this "recent encounter")

Re:

[war4peace]

If you judge a phone maker by how good their support is, then I doubt your judgment.
I might be missing something, but I am yet to find a reason to contact any phone maker's support.

Re:

[shanen]

Please stop projecting your gawd-like intelligence, such that you never encounter a problem or need to learn anything new. I bow before your infinite wisdom.

Nor did I write that the support was the sole criterion I applied in rating smartphones. Come to think of it, maybe your gawd-like reading comprehension could use some work.

Or maybe the real problem is that I spend some time working in support? I rather enjoyed it, even though it was tough work. After a while they automatically threw me the tough cases,

Re:

[Type44Q]

Please stop projecting your gawd-like intelligence, such that you never encounter a problem or need to learn anything new.

I've encountered hundreds of problems with the dozen or so Androids I've owned over the years, but as someone who got their start providing corporate IT support in the mid-90's, I wouldn't ever resort to calling the phone manufacturer for anything other than a warranty issue, as I already know how that would go.

Re:

[shanen]

I sort of agree with you, but I don't feel like that excuses the sad state of things. Yes, I know that the sad reality is that I do have to solve my own problems because support is usually bad to terrible. Manufacturers tend to have the worst excuses for "support". However I can actually remember one counterexample involving Western Digital... Longish story and you probably aren't interested.

However I also sympathize with the people who can't solve their problems. I think they should be able to get support

Re:

[war4peace]

I have encountered LOTS of problems on lots of phones, and never had to refer to manufacturer support. None of the problems required it.
App problems were app-related, and were fixed through searching the Internet or uninstalling the app (whether the bug was fixable or not).
OS problems were fixed the same way (search Internet) or patching to the next OS version, or installing a custom ROM.
Hardware problems would be resolved by sending the phone to the store I bought it from under warranty (never happened so

Re:

[shanen]

You got me to review my comments in this branch. Either you're lying or you don't read well. Looks to me like there's no point in pretending there's a discussion going on here.

S-Voice (and Bixby)

[jdawgnoonan]

Does anyone actually use this shit? I am on iPhone and I barely use Google Assistant more than I use Siri, I can't believe many people on Android do not use Google Assistant.

Re:

[jdawgnoonan]

Meant to say I barely use Siri because I use Google Assistant. Why doesn't Slashdot allow edits to these posts?

Re:

[Yeechang Lee]

Meant to say I barely use Siri because I use Google Assistant.

How do you use Google Assistant when the phone is locked? I don't want to have to unlock my phone every time I want to ask something.

Re: S-Voice (and Bixby)

[brunes69]

You'd be surprised to find out how many people never change their phone from the default settings it has out of the box.

MOTHERF*#$^@

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Goddamnit, I actually use S-voice to do shit like set reminders and alarms and do quickie, mindless stuff like that.

So of course they're shutting it down, I mean, fuck the ~100 million people that have older devices, amirite?

Re:

[drolli]

Samsung has a tradition of attempting to clone apple and when it does not pay out immediately, the service/product is shut down a little later. One of the things which drove me away from their phones is that they try to push their services onto you, but there is zero consistency what happens if you get used to it.

Re:

[dotancohen]

I still use my Note 3 and love it. I would love to update to a later model phone, but none of them have the features of the Note 3 that I use.

Not to mention, even though my Note 3 is still on the original screen and it's never been broken, the newer Notes use a curved (actually triple) screen which is far more fragile than the flat screen with bezels. And it costs more than 50% the cost of the device just to replace the screen. How could someone consider buying such a device?!?

Re:

[samwichse]

Good news, you can't just use the google assistant and do the same thing.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[srichard25]

I rarely see people using voice assistants when in an office full of people. The prime use case is when driving a car, especially when paired with Android Auto or Apple Carplay.

????? WTF is S-Voice?????

[thegarbz]

I've used Samsung phones since the S1. My girlfriend and I alternate between models so between us we've had every flagship Samsung phone released. How is it that I'm hearing about S-Voice being an assistant for the first time?

That's a marketing fail if I've ever seen one. I've seen the S-Voice icon. I always assumed it was a damn voice recorder and since I'm not a PI in a 60 noire detective film I've never clicked it.

I'm not being funny here. I thought Bixby was Samsung's first voice assistant. I only ever

Good riddance

[OneHundredAndTen]

This app filled out a much-needed gap in the Internet world.

So... where does my S7 sit?

[YesBut4Whatever]

"The Galaxy S8 and every device after it launched with Bixby and not S-Voice, so this shutdown should only effect older devices. SamMobile hunted down a list of applicable devices, saying "The affected models that have the S Voice icon on the app screen include the Galaxy A3, A5, A7, A8, A9, Galaxy Note FE, Galaxy Note 2, 3, 4, 5, Galaxy S3, 4, S5, S6, S6 edge in addition to the Galaxy Note Pro 12.2, Galaxy W, Galaxy Tab 4, Galaxy Tab 4 8.0/10.1, Galaxy Tab S8.4 and S10.5."