Samsung has announced a new version of Bixby for the AI era. The new Bixby, which is launching alongside One UI 8.5, has agentic capabilities which means that it can do things on your behalf faster and more efficiently. It understands what people are saying more effectively and then do a bunch of tasks from changing your Samsung phone’s settings to searching the open web and fetching useful information.
The updated Bixby can understand natural language – and the context behind it – so Samsung device users won’t have to memorise specific commands or settings in order to do things. “Bixby allows users to control and navigate Galaxy devices using natural language, without the need for exact setting names or commands,” Samsung said in a blog post.
With the One UI 8.5 update, which is currently available in beta, Bixby can better understand the context behind what you are saying. When someone wants to change a setting on their Samsung phone, for instance to make the screen stay on while they are looking at it, they can use simple words they might be familiar with and use on day-to-day basis rather than having to know the technical term.
When prompted, Bixby can analyse the device’s settings and suggest relevant solutions, much more consistently than before.
Beyond handing device controls, Samsung is also adding real-time web search capability directly within Bixby’s interface. Now, users can request up-to-date information and find relevant results without being redirected to a separate browser or app. Samsung notes that the real-time information feature may require location permission, and the company says that any location data used is deleted immediately after the response is generated.
The updated Bixby will be initially available across six countries: Germany, India, Korea, Poland, the UK, and the U.S. The company plans to expand it to more markets in future. For now, it can recognise 13 languages. Samsung says, “not all accents, dialects, and expressions are recognised.”
The updated Bixby is launching just days ahead of Samsung’s Unpacked event in San Francisco where the company will take the wraps off its next wave of flagship Galaxy phones, aka the Galaxy S26 series. The line-up is expected to include three models with the top-tier Galaxy S26 Ultra set to arrive with a privacy display feature.
