Bixby can be run on older Samsung smartphones but unofficially

One of the most anticipated features of recently launched Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus was the virtual voice assistant Bixby. Currently, the app is not available on any other Samsung devices and the company has no plans of doing so in near future.

So does it mean people with older Samsung smartphones would never have the chance to use it? Well, apparently not. A person who uses the handle takerhbk managed to get Bixby running on a Galaxy S7 device in an XDA-Developers forum and a number of users were able to replicate the same process. So basically, Bixby should be able to work on any Samsung device running Android 7.0 Nougat but unofficially.

If you want to get the Bixby working on your phone as well, all you need to do is install the Galaxy S8 launcher and then the Bixby APK file.

APKs usually appear before app updates make it to the Google Play Store. As we have already said Samsung has no plans to bring this assistant to the Play Store, at least for now. The Korean electronics giant has not made any responses regarding this matter.

Unlike Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus, older Samsung smartphones, like the last year's Galaxy S7, don't feature a dedicated hardware button to access Bixby. So the experience would not be exactly similar.

If you are a user of a Samsung phone running Nougat, you may have other options soon. Google has been trying to bring the Google assistant to smartphones running Android Nougat and Android Marshmallow, while Microsoft's Cortana is already available on the Google Play Store.