Samsung's been trying to make Bixby work for years—and now, with One UI 8.5, the company is taking another swing at relevance. This time, the pitch is different: Bixby isn't just a voice assistant anymore. Samsung is positioning it as a conversational device agent, powered by better natural language understanding, real-time web access, and tighter integration with your phone's settings and troubleshooting tools.
The upgrade arrives alongside the Galaxy S25 series launch, expected at Samsung's Unpacked event on February 25, and it's rolling out initially in Germany, India, Korea, Poland, the UK, and the US, according to Samsung. The company has plans for broader expansion, though no timeline or device list has been shared.
What's interesting here isn't just that Samsung is updating Bixby—it's that the update aims to make the assistant feel less like a search engine and more like a control layer that sits between you and your phone's complexity. Since Bixby's 2017 launch, Samsung has released multiple overhauls, yet the assistant has struggled to gain meaningful traction. This update shows a clear strategic pivot: instead of competing head-to-head with Google's conversational capabilities, Samsung is betting that device control—the unglamorous work of managing settings—is where AI assistants should prove their value first.
What's actually new in this version of Bixby?
The headline feature is conversational device control. Instead of hunting through settings menus or remembering exact toggle names, you can describe what you want in plain language, and Bixby is supposed to figure it out. For example, you can say "I don't want the screen to time out while I'm still looking at it," and Bixby will activate the "Keep Screen on While Viewing" setting without requiring you to navigate anywhere. Samsung is also leaning into troubleshooting, where the assistant can check your current settings, understand the context of your question, and suggest a fix you can apply immediately. If your screen keeps lighting up in your pocket, Bixby can point you to "Accidental Touch Protection" and let you toggle it. That's the kind of practical help people often ask chatbots for, but here it's tied directly into the phone's controls, according to Digital Trends.
The other big change is real-time web search, displayed inside Bixby's own interface. Instead of sending you off to a browser, Bixby can now fetch live web results and show them directly within its overlay. A request like finding kid-friendly hotels in Seoul can return live web results without leaving the assistant.
Here's where things get interesting: Samsung previously mentioned Perplexity AI as powering this web integration in a newsroom post that was subsequently deleted. The latest official announcement makes no mention of Perplexity, even though the examples used are identical to the ones in the previously deleted post. This raises questions about Samsung's AI partnerships and whether the company is hedging its bets across multiple providers—or if a planned partnership fell through at the last minute. Either way, the web integration clearly works, allowing Bixby to pull live answers into the assistant window itself rather than redirecting you to external apps.
How does this stack up against Gemini and Google Assistant?
Here's where things get messy. On the Galaxy S25 series, Gemini is now the default voice assistant, activated by long-pressing the side button—a gesture that used to belong to Bixby. Samsung has also created integration for Gemini with Samsung Calendar, Samsung Notes, and Samsung Reminder, meaning you can ask Gemini to add information to Notes or create reminders in Samsung's stock apps. Bixby still comes pre-loaded, but it no longer handles voice assistant tasks by default. You can manually launch it or change the side button setting back to Bixby if you prefer.
Samsung told some publications that Gemini and Bixby can both be activated depending on the task—Gemini for search functions, Bixby for Samsung app control. But in practice, it seems like you can only use Bixby by manually launching it from the app drawer or changing the default side button settings, according to SamMobile.
This creates a confusing user experience where Samsung is simultaneously upgrading Bixby while demoting it from default status. The decision to default to Gemini while investing in Bixby suggests a hedging strategy—the company is building its own AI capabilities while acknowledging Google's superior conversational abilities and broader knowledge base. Samsung's new Bixby beta is a direct push to make the assistant feel more like ChatGPT or Gemini, but with a clearer job: running your Galaxy phone, according to Digital Trends.
The gap between Samsung's public messaging and the actual implementation suggests the company is still figuring out how these two assistants should coexist. For now, users face a choice: convenience (Gemini by default) or deeper device integration (Bixby when manually launched). Which assistant you should use depends on your task—Gemini excels at general knowledge, creative requests, and cross-app workflows involving Google services, while Bixby's strength lies in device control and Samsung ecosystem integration.
What does "agentic" actually mean here?
Samsung is calling Bixby a "conversational device agent"—which sounds like marketing speak until you realize that's actually a meaningful technical shift. In AI circles, "agentic" means software that can take autonomous actions on your behalf rather than just answering questions. This shifts Bixby from a Q&A tool to something more like a power user sitting between you and your phone's complexity.
The practical implication: instead of learning where settings live in your phone's menu structure, you're teaching an AI what outcomes you want. As phone settings become packed with features and toggles, Bixby is supposed to simplify things by functioning as an interactive device manual. Modern smartphones have become overwhelmingly complex—the Galaxy S25 has hundreds of settings across dozens of menus. An AI layer that genuinely understands "make my battery last longer" and adjusts multiple settings accordingly could be more valuable than one that writes poetry or generates images.
The assistant can consider the context of your question, check what's already enabled, then suggest a fix you can apply immediately. Rather than offering generic instructions, Bixby can identify the current settings of the device and suggest various possible solutions, reducing trial and error.
But the approach has clear boundaries: Bixby can't make judgment calls about ambiguous requests, and it's limited to Samsung's ecosystem. Ask it to interact with a third-party app's settings, and you're back to manual navigation. Google's approach with Gemini prioritizes general knowledge and conversation, while Apple's rumored Siri overhaul reportedly focuses on app automation. Samsung is betting that device control is where AI assistants should start—a pragmatic choice that plays to the company's hardware integration advantage.
Should you actually use it?
That depends on what frustrates you most about your phone. If you're in one of the launch regions, the best move is to check for One UI 8.5, then test Bixby with messy, everyday requests. That's where this update either replaces a few ChatGPT or Gemini queries, or falls back into the background, according to Digital Trends.
PRO TIP: Test Bixby with your most annoying settings tasks—the ones buried three menus deep that you can never remember how to find. If it saves you 30 seconds multiple times daily, it's worth the switch. Start with requests like "stop my screen from timing out when I'm reading" or "why does my phone keep vibrating in my pocket" to see if the natural language understanding actually works.
Here's what you need to know about when to use which assistant:
Bixby excels at:
Adjusting complex device settings (display, battery, camera modes)
Troubleshooting device-specific issues
Controlling Samsung ecosystem devices
Tasks that require checking current settings before suggesting fixes
Stick with Gemini for:
General knowledge questions
Creative tasks (writing, brainstorming, image generation)
Cross-app workflows
Anything involving Google services (Maps, Drive, Search)
Power users who frequently adjust device settings will find the most value here. If you rarely venture beyond basic phone functions, Gemini's conversational abilities and broader knowledge base might serve you better. The headline benefit is fewer trips through menus, which sounds useful if you're tired of hunting for toggles buried three layers deep in settings.
The other advantage is support for real-time web data, which helps answer questions a voice assistant's typical knowledge base or a large language model's context window otherwise couldn't handle. The fifth One UI 8.5 build also brings general bug fixes, performance improvements, and polish ahead of the expected stable release.
Where does Bixby go from here?
Samsung introduced the newer generation Bixby, powered by large language models, in China a few months ago. In addition to remembering context, it works with several apps and can do a lot more things. However, Samsung doesn't seem to have added most of those features to Bixby in other countries. It was expected that the same next-generation Bixby revealed by Samsung in China would be released in other countries with One UI 7.0 and with the Galaxy S25, but that didn't happen.
Samsung's decision to launch advanced Bixby features in China first likely reflects both market dynamics—Chinese users can't access Google services, making a proprietary assistant more valuable—and development priorities. The question is whether the company will invest in bringing feature parity globally, or if international Bixby will remain a secondary option to Gemini.
The real test for Bixby isn't whether it can control device settings—it's whether Samsung can convince users to actively choose it over Gemini. Making it non-default while upgrading it sends mixed signals about the company's commitment. The update is tied to One UI 8.5 and starts in select markets, and Samsung says a wider expansion is coming, but it hasn't shared a timeline or a list of supported devices, so availability will vary by model and region.
Samsung teased the announcements as "marking a new phase in the era of AI as intelligence becomes truly personal and adaptive". In a market where companies are racing to build smarter AI layers into their ecosystems—Apple trying to reinvent Siri with deeper app automation, Google pushing Gemini as the conversational interface for Android—Samsung may have just secured something others have been chasing: a tightly integrated AI assistant that controls the device and searches the web.
Bottom line: Bixby exists in limbo—upgraded but not default, capable but not comprehensive. Whether Samsung commits to making it a true Gemini competitor or accepts its role as a device control layer will determine if this update matters long-term. For now, it is a pragmatic bet that practical utility trumps conversational flair—at least when you're fumbling through settings at midnight trying to figure out why your battery is draining.
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