- Samsung is revamping Bixby with natural language upgrades and AI-powered context awareness
- The updated Bixby integrates Perplexity for real-time web search directly inside the assistant
- It will roll out publicly with One UI 8.5, starting with the Galaxy S26 and later expanding
Samsung’s Bixby is back. Or at least, a newly revamped and upgraded version of the AI assistant is back. Bixby is returning with a conversational facelift, a Perplexity-powered brain, and a spot in Samsung’s One UI 8.5 beta operating system, which began rolling out to Galaxy S25 testers this week. Bixby promises to sound more natural, understand conversational context, and actually do things you want.
Samsung confirmed the new version of Bixby will debut publicly with the first stable One UI 8.5 build in a blog post, which it mysteriously deleted not long after posting it. The announcement said Bixby will arrive alongside the Galaxy S26 series in the coming weeks. For now, it’s limited to a beta release in select markets, but its ambitions are global.
The biggest change may be that Bixby finally understands what you mean, grasping context in ways it never had before. Ask it to keep the screen on while you’re using your phone, and it will toggle the setting itself without wandering off on the internet. The new Bixby aims to eliminate the moments of error so many former users complained about.
And Bixby’s model won’t be alone in the smartphone. Samsung has integrated Perplexity, the AI search tool engine with real-time data. That means Bixby acts as a gateway to Perplexity’s knowledge, providing up-to-date answers without a browser or multiple apps.
For Samsung, the shift is as much strategic as it is technical. The company has been heavily promoting Google Gemini on Galaxy devices. But Bixby is Samsung’s baby, created as an answer to Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant. Now, by blending Bixby’s device knowledge with Perplexity’s broader search smarts, Samsung can offer a different experience from modern alternatives like ChatGPT or Gemini.
The new Bixby is trying to become the first voice assistant that’s truly decent at both providing AI-powered answers and acting as the concierge for your device. Imagine telling your phone: “Don’t let the screen turn off while I’m cooking,” and having it just stay on. Or asking, “Why is my battery draining overnight?” and getting an answer rooted in both settings and search data. This is the sort of help Samsung wants Bixby to provide.
Bixby reborn
Still, Samsung has a reputation to overcome. Bixby has spent most of its existence as the first feature Galaxy owners switched off. It tried to distinguish itself through Samsung-only features, but even in Samsung’s own operating system, Bixby has been overshadowed by Google services.
Seeding the new Bixby as part of a beta may help Samsung polish up the AI assistant so that doesn’t happen again. As a relaunch, it’s notable for not rebranding as Bixby 2.0 or Bixby+. Samsung’s assumption is apparently that if the tool is useful, people will come back.
If Bixby can understand casual language and context well enough to manage phone settings and look up information without juggling apps and tabs, Samsung might pull off its resurrection attempt. Modern smartphones are complex. If Bixby can reduce friction people might actually talk to it. That’s all most of us wanted from voice assistants in the first place.
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ESchwartzwrites@gmail.com (Eric Hal Schwartz)
