The announcement of the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus was accompanied, as expected, from the presentation of Bixby, the new artificial intelligence improved (probably) and developed after the acquisition by Samsung of the startup Viv Labs, founded by the original authors of Siri. Despite being exclusive of the two new top of the range, the truth is that with a little patience you can also make it work, at least in part, on other devices from the Korean house updated to Android 7.0 Nougat.
Hello Bixby, but limited to Google Now
As we say, we will not have the full functionality of the virtual assistant, rather just the screen that shows similar cards in Google Now. The application does not seem to have a particular utility, as it obviously lacks the advanced features such as voice assistant.
To run the application, available through an apk obtained by XDA, but also in APKMirror, requires the installation of the Galaxy S8 launcher and the presence of a Samsung smartphone updated to Android Nougat. It seems that attempts to install on devices with Android Marshmallow has not given a successful result.
The instructions for running Hello Bixby are very simple because, after installing the Galaxy S8 launcher and Bixby from the apk file, you only need to open the launcher settings and activate Bixby. After restarting the smartphone, it will be possible to access Bixby with a tap from the left side of the screen.
Bixby still does not speak other languages but English (support for other languages should come later this year), but the component you are installing will be Bixby's home, a kind of competitor for Google Now, which collects weather information, reminders, calendar, alarms, applications and much more to provide contextual content based on the time of day.