Samsung Kills Off Its Digital Assistant (No, Not That One)

Samsung is one of the companies that invested in digital assistants long before they end up becoming such a cool feature to have on a smartphone.

S Voice, the South Korean’s firm digital assistant, is actually the predecessor of Bixby, but at the same time, it’s also the feature that almost nobody used.

And because the usage of S Voice was so reduced and Bixby is now getting all the love from Samsung, the phone maker has finally made the decision that pretty much everybody expected: S Voice will be retired once and for all.

According to a report from SamMobile, S Voice will go dark on June 1 this year, after which using the assistant will end up with an error reading “I’m unable to process your request. Try again later.” Trying again later obviously won’t make any difference.

You can use your device just normally

In case you’re wondering what changes after S Voice is discontinued, well, not much. You can continue using your device just like before, especially if you’ve never used S Voice in the first place.

This assistant was installed on the Galaxy S3 to Galaxy S6 and Note 2 to Note 5, so the decision mostly affects only older-generation smartphones. If you’re using a Galaxy S or Note that’s newer than the models mentioned above, then your device should come with Bixby, the new-generation digital assistant that Samsung puts so much effort into.

Of course, given Samsung’s devices run Android, there are several other assistants that you can use on a Galaxy S or Note model, including Google’s very own Assistant. More recently, however, the world of Android lost one major digital assistant, as Microsoft decided to retire the Cortana app in most markets as part of its focus on the enterprise side of its service.