Feature Articles

Hands-on: All the new Samsung Galaxy S9 / S9+ camera features

By Zachary Chan - 28 Feb 2018

Bixby Vision

Bixby Vision Live Translation and Food Recognition

The last set of camera improvements are actually functional features for Bixby Vision. This includes live language translation and food identification. The main feature here is that you no longer need to snap a photo first to send to Bixby for processing, and both features are available live. All you have to do is point your camera at a foreign text or a food item, click on the Bixby icon and you'll get instant translations and food information overlay.

For food identification, Bixby will show you a quick calorie count on the food it recognizes, and you can bring up a more detailed nutritional sheet if you choose to. Samsung couldn't provide us with any numbers yet on how large their database is, but from what we understand, it is separated by market instead of one large global food database.

During the demo however, there was only one muffin we could try on, with some mixed results. It detected the muffin as a popover a few times, and because of that, I now know what a popover is. Bixby does offer a selection of similar suggestions you can manually click on if you don't think it has identified the right food though, so that's something, but among all the features covered so far, this is the most gimmicky. Here's our video of it in action:-

At launch, Bixby's Live Translation can translate 54 input languages into 104 output languages in real time. Out of this 54 input language, Bixby can automatically identify 33 of them, while the remaining 21 requires manual selection. 


Read Next (1): Exclusive First Looks: Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+

Read Next (2): Local pricing, availability and pre-order details!

Join HWZ's Telegram channel here and catch all the latest tech news!
Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.