Mobility Redefined

How device makers are slowly but surely making the ‘smartphone does it all’ concept a reality.

- John Law and Peter Chu

Smartphone: a device that first came onto the scene in 1994 with the IBM Simon, and arguably turned into the cultural phenomenon that it is today with the groundbreaking launch of the Apple iPhone in 2007.

Since then, smartphones and the technology empowering them have progressed exponentially. Just imagine, the once foreign concept of artificial intelligence is now an integral feature of most premium smartphones, while smartphone displays have become pixel-dense and cutting-edge enough to emulate the viewing experience of a full-fledged TV.

If you thought smartphone technology was slowly heading towards an inevitable period of stagnancy, you would be terribly mistaken, because from here on out, it’s full steam ahead.

At the top of the list of innovative features and products are Samsung and its new Galaxy S8 and S8+ smartphones. While the bezel-less Infinity Display has been turning heads, there are several other factors contributing to their popularity: Bixby and DeX.

Virtual assistant

Much like Google Assistant, Microsoft Cortana, and Apple’s Siri, Bixby is Samsung’s take on a voice assistant. According to Samsung, Bixby is designed to work seamlessly between touch and voice commands, but what’s even more impressive is the way that Bixby is able to comprehend complex voice commands – to the extent where you can tell it to open a specific app or take down notes.

Bixby even has a feature called Bixby Vision that allows you to learn more about an object by simply pointing the camera – in this case, of the Galaxy S8 – at it. Let’s say you want to learn some facts about the Petronas Twin Towers, or the main ingredients or recipe of a particular dish. Instead of Googling it as you instinctively would, with Bixby Vision, Bixby will provide you with the answers upon pointing the camera at them.