Samsung just announced via a notice shown to users in its Camera app Bixby, that it is discontinuing a bunch of the AR features offered in the app, starting from the end of this month. The features that will no longer be available reportedly include Places, Home Décor, Styling, and Makeup.
All the different features in Bixby offer a range of AR functionalities. For example, Places help with better navigation through overlaid map icons on Samsung’s camera that highlight local landmarks, stores, restaurants, etc. With Makeup, users can virtually try out a variety of makeup products on their faces, like eyeshadow, lipstick, blush, etc. Similarly, Styling allows for virtually trying out accessories like sunglasses. Home Décor allows users to virtually view the placement of different home appliances and furniture.
Apart from that, Bixby also offers other helpful features like real-time translation and accessibility tools like Quick Reader, which helps users with visual impairments by reading out text seen by the camera.
Bixby was launched by Samsung in 2017, alongside the Samsung Galaxy S8. It was an addition in Samsung’s line of the Google Assistant and other AR services provided by Google.
According to some reports, Samsung is in talks with Google about showing its services more prominently on Samsung devices.
While Samsung decides to remove the AR features from Bixby, it is not taking down all of them, so users still have the opportunity to make use of the rest of the useful features that Bixby offers.
