Samsung Bixby Vision's Amazon Feature Finally Works On Verizon

Samsung's highlight feature for the Galaxy S8, aside from its Infinity Display, has had a rather rough start. Bixby, its self-made smart assistant, didn't exactly launch guns a blazing. Even worse if you happened to be on Verizon, where Bixby's already limited starting features were even more limited. For its part, Verizon did acknowledge the issue and promised a fix soon. That soon has finally arrived, at least according to some users, who can finally use Bixby Vision to shop on Amazon.

At launch, Bixby only had three features, two of which were mostly forgettable. Bixby Home and Bixby Reminders were pretty much stand-ins for features already found in something like Google Now or Google Assistant. Although not its biggest promised feature, Bixby Vision is relatively more interesting.

Utilizing the Galaxy S8's camera and some computer vision wizardry, Bixby Vision could identify real world objects. By itself, it mostly does nothing more than that but, by hooking to third party services, it can achieve more. Pinterest integration, for example, would let users search for related images on the website. And Amazon integration would let users search for and shop right then and there.

That feature, however, didn't initially work on Verizon for some unknown reason. It worked OK on other networks, so it's puzzling to have it not work on Verizon from day one. Past is past, as some would say, and now it does work. As can be expected, it's not perfect, on Verizon or elsewhere, and there are times when Bixby gets stumped at trying to correctly identify what an item really is.

As for Bixby Voice, that has started rolling out in Korea, which means a US arrival is coming really soon, hopefully within this month. Samsung's initial list of supported apps looks promising and early responses to the feature sound positive.

VIA: SamMobile