In a world where Gemini dominates the Android assistant role, an unlikely voice assistant is rising to the occasion. The often-neglected Samsung Bixby is getting a glow up, and no, this isn’t a leak or early rumor.
The South Korean tech giant introduced the all-new Bixby experience with One UI 8.5, which should power the Samsung Galaxy S26 on release, and subsequently older Galaxy devices too.
Galaxy S25 owners in the US can now try out the newest One UI tricks
This may be the last beta before One UI 8.5’s release
First things first: Samsung has made no mention of Perplexity powering the new Bixby experience. For those unaware, leaks over the past few months have indicated Samsung relying on Perplexity’s AI smarts to supercharge Bixby. We’ve seen an early preview, a video of Perplexity handling web-based Bixby queries, and even a Gemini Live-like Bixby Live implementation.
Samsung, however, made no mention of Perplexity being the brains of the operation. Regardless, there are a few notable updates worth unpacking, especially the voice assistant’s new ability to understand context in natural language.
In an example shared by the tech giant, a user can say something like “I don’t want the screen to time out while I’m still looking at it.” Bixby will be able to understand what the user wants, and it will immediately turn on the ‘Keep Screen on While Viewing’ setting without the user having to dig through menus.
Similarly, if a user asks, “Why is my phone screen always on when it’s inside my pocket?” Bixby will be able to bring up relevant settings for Accidental Touch Protection, allowing users to make necessary changes.
Elsewhere, Bixby is also gaining real-time web search capabilities. This is something that was previously believed to be powered by Perplexity.
More importantly, Samsung wants to retain users within Bixby’s UI. Real-time web search results appear directly within the Bixby overlay, as seen in the short GIF above, which means you won’t be redirected to Chrome or Samsung Internet to get your answer.
These updates won’t be enough for me to replace Gemini with Bixby, though there might be more to the update that Samsung is keeping under wraps, with notable updates to grace the stage an Unpacked.
Users won’t have to wait too long to see the new Bixby in action. One UI 8.5 is slated to debut alongside the Galaxy S26 at Galaxy Unpacked on February 25th. It’s worth noting though that the Bixby update will be limited to users in the US, Germany, India, Korea, Poland, and the UK. The update will expand to more countries in the future.
