Long before Bixby became the punching bag of everything wrong with Android device maker’s insistence on doing some things in-house (even though we are now close to a year since it became clear why that is not exactly as bad a thing as we’ve been saying it is), there was S Voice.
The old Samsung assistant wasn’t as divisive as Bixby is but it wasn’t any effective, either.
Sure, it could do the little banter but it was made irrelevant by the then Google Now and its main reason for existence – to give Samsung Galaxy users something close to Apple’s Siri – quickly became its main undoing as both S Voice and Siri fell behind the brave new world of AI-powered assistants heralded by the Google Assistant and others.
With Samsung seeking to move with the times as evidenced by its acquisitions and then the decision to introduce a whole new digital assistance that could do a lot more, Bixby, a year later, S Voice’s death certificate had already been signed.
What became of Samsung's S Voice? Will it re-emerge after the Viv buyout?
— permanent irrefutable public user (@echenze) October 6, 2016
Any hopes of S Voice ever getting better were dashed.
Samsung needs to kill S Voice as well. Junk. I always thought it would get better. It hasn't.
— permanent irrefutable public user (@echenze) February 13, 2015
As such, it comes as no surprise that years after we moved on and forgot it ever existed, Samsung has decided to finally pull the plug on S Voice.
According to Sammobile, Samsung plans to discontinue the voice assistant on June 1st.
“If you try using the assistant after that, it will return the “I’m unable to process your request. Try again later” message.”
For many, we assume, this shouldn’t be something to grieve over.
Ever since the Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge were released, S Voice has not shipped on a Samsung flagship device and among the popular Samsung budget devices, it never showed up on the J series and was limited to the Galaxy A series which were only “budget” by Samsung’s global standards and not local standards, as they are today. Still, it will barely be missed.
