It seems Bixby Vision on Verizon’s flavor of the Galaxy Note 8 is not capable of identifying and providing information on wine. At present, this is not a confirmed aspect by Verizon, but some form of a confirmation has come through Samsung’s community forums. In the aptly named “Bixby vision does not show wine” forum post, the user notes how the feature does not seem to be working. After much back and forth between the original poster and a Samsung Moderator, the moderator explains “I was able to look into this a bit deeper. It looks like this feature may have been taken off on the Verizon models of the Note8.” Seemingly confirming that the feature is not just currently absent on Verizon’s Galaxy Note 8, but was never included at launch.
Although it is unclear as to why this is the case, as this is a shared feature with the likes of the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus, it is also possible the feature is inactive on those phones as well. Which if correct, could stem back to an issue which first came to light when the two Galaxy S8s launched, as Bixby Vision was not available at that time on Verizon’s versions. In particular, it was the Amazon integration which powers Bixby Vision’s capabilities that was not present. While an update did come through a few weeks later adding Bixby Vision to those phones, the reasoning begin the delay was never fully explained. Whether the two instances are related or not remains to be seen, although they could be as they do presumably rely on the same underlying Amazon technology. Meaning while it may now be working for most items, it might not have been ever optimized for wine content on Verizon models.
Adding further confirmation to the feature having been omitted, in addition to it missing from the Galaxy Note 8’s camera interface on the Verizon model it also seems to be absent from the Bixby Vision settings in general. As in those settings users are able to toggle on and off various categories such as images, places, text, and wine. The wine option however does not show at all within the settings on Verizon models, based on screenshots shared by the original poster of the issue. You can see the difference between the original poster’s Bixby Vision settings below compared to the settings screen we pulled from a T-Mobile variant of the Galaxy Note 8.