By Eric Hal Schwartz
Publication Date: 2026-01-21 14:36:00
- 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…
