Samsung Bixby may not be the most popular digital assistant around, eclipsed by the much more significant popularity of Google Assistant and Apple's Siri. But Bixby still finds itself in a good spot within the Samsung ecosystem of consumer electronics. Samsung has now updated Bixby on Galaxy smartphones to v3.0, adding in support for Indian English and some other India-specific features.

With Bixby 3.0, Samsung says that Bixby dons an Indian English avatar. The voice assistant can now understand Indian English and accompanying accents and context. Bixby can now check the weather in Indian cities, start a yoga timer, understand Indian words for relationships, show recipes for local cuisines, and more.

To activate these capabilities, you need to switch over to English (India) as your language. This should be available as an option if you are starting up the app for the first time. For existing users, Samsung has placed a helpful banner for users in India that lets them quickly reach the relevant language settings page. Most queries should be made available post such setting, but some other features require some more steps. For instance, you can make calls to relatives using the Hindi words for those relationships (for eg: "Bhaiya" for Brother), but for that, you do need to set up your relationships to let Bixby understand which exact contact you are referring to when you issue those commands.

Bixby with English (India) is currently available on the following devices:

Bixby may have taken a back seat, but it's not dead, as Samsung has shown that it is committed to its digital assistant. Last year, the service received a major redesign, making it easier to invoke and interact with the voice assistant without hiding away on-screen tasks. And now with this update, the assistant becomes slightly more usable for the country with the world's second largest population.