One of the biggest questions surrounding Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy Home speaker — aside from the price and release date — has been whether or not the company will be letting other developers build their own integrations for Bixby or not. But we may not have to wait much longer to find out, with the Wall Street Journal reporting that Samsung will be showing off new, third-party “capsules” for its smart assistant at the upcoming Samsung Developer Conference next week.
Bixby is getting smarter
Bixby capsules sound like they’ll work a lot like Alexa Skills or Google Assistant Actions — additional functions that third-party developers can add to Samsung’s smart assistant for their own services, letting users say, order a pizza or summon an Uber.
Opening the door to developers could be crucial if the Galaxy Home is to have any form of success — one of the biggest issues with Bixby to date is that it just hasn’t been very good. Expanding the toolbox of what Bixby can do across all the devices that Samsung offers it on could go a long way to bridging those shortcomings (assuming developers show up, that is).
The announcement of Bixby capsules is just one part of Samsung’s expected news for its developer conference, which is also expected to give an early preview of Samsung’s long-anticipated folding smartphone.