Samsung Foldable Smartphone Gives Bixby A Powerful Reboot

Following its annual developer conference here in the United States, Samsung hosted another developer conference in Seoul earlier today. While a lot of the topics it covered today were similar to what we saw earlier in the month, it did make at least one interesting announcement concerning its upcoming foldable phone. As it turns out, that foldable smnartphone will play host to a new version of Bixby.

Samsung is apparently already at work on this souped up (or so we assume) version of Bixby, but details about it were pretty light. In fact, there were hardy any concrete details at all, with Samsung only confirming an improved Bixby's presence on its folding smartphone and nothing more.

"The new Bixby currently in the pipeline will be featured in the foldable smartphone, but it has not been decided yet whether it will be named Bixby 3.0," Samsung executive vice president Chung Eui-suk told The Investor in an interview at the developer conference. Aside from that, it looks like we're left waiting on Samsung for more details about what this new version of Bixby will entail.

As least as far as this foldable smartphone is concerned, waiting for additional details is simply par for the course. Though Samsung had the device on-hand at SDC 2018 earlier this month, the phone only got what's best described as a half-reveal. Samsung did show us a smartphone with 4-inch display that folds out into a 7.3-inch tablet, but it did so in the dark, obscuring its design.

In any case, it probably won't be long before we hear more about what's next for Bixby. Samsung seems to be going all-in on its AI platform, opening it up to third-party developers earlier this month and committing to putting it on all of its devices by 2020. Whether or not this effort will result in pulling a significant number of people away from Google Assistant or Siri remains to be seen, so stay tuned.