In the last two years, voice assistants have exploded. Every major smartphone manufacturer wants to offer its own solution that is supposed to be a bit smarter than the competition. Siri started the big race in 2010. It was followed by Google Now, which turned into Google Assistant last year. Alexa from Amazon, less known to us, also showed up. And finally this year saw the light of day Bixby, the assistant from Samsung.
It is the last mentioned assistant who is the youngest of all, as he debuted only in the spring of this year together with the flagship Galaxy S8. Bixby's language support is very limited so far - initially Korean and recently added US English. However, this does not necessarily mean that it lags behind competing assistants.
After all, he has just tested all four of the above assistants Marques Brownlee in his latest video. He took so iPhone 7 Plus with the latest iOS 11, OnePlus 5 with the most up-to-date Androidum Galaxy S8 with Bixby and HTC U11 with Alexa. However, he did not test the assistants' speed of response to commands, but their ability to respond to them, or to perform the commanded action, and this is what makes his video different from most.
Marques started with a simple question about the weather, a math example and a list of other information, in which Siri and Google Assistant clearly ruled. This was followed by a kind of simulated conversation where the assistants received further orders based on the previous ones. Here, Bixby did not make a very good name, but neither did Siri, the only Assistant from Google managed to respond correctly to all questions.
But where Bixby clearly reigned over all other assistants was integration with applications. She was the only one who could open the camera app and take a selfie or search for Uber and install the app that was in the first position in the search results. Even Siri and Google Assistant didn't fare badly in this test. On the contrary, Alexa couldn't be worse.
In the end, Marques kept one pearl. He ordered all four assistants to rap something. Surprisingly, everyone managed it, but clearly the best performance was given by Bixby, who accompanied her rap with a proper beat and her flow was definitely the most progressive.
