Samsung’s One UI 8.5 beta gives Bixby a real intelligence upgrade

Samsung has given Bixby its most meaningful update in years. With the One UI 8.5 beta update, the company is repositioning its long-overlooked (borderline snubbed) assistant as a conversational device agent that actually understands how people talk, while also gaining access to live information from the web.

The update is now available through a limited beta rollout. It clearly indicates that Samsung wants its users to interact with their Galaxy phones in a more intuitive manner. Less command-and-control, more conversation.

Bixby learns to speak human

In One UI 8.5, Bixby is designed to interpret intent rather than rigid voice commands. You no longer need to remember where a setting lives or what it is officially called. Instead, you can explain what you want to happen or ask why something is happening, and Bixby responds by surfacing the relevant controls or explanations. Pretty neat, right?

Say you are annoyed that your screen keeps turning off while you are reading. Tell Bixby that, and it can jump straight to the right display setting and enable or disable it. Ask why your phone stays awake in your pocket, and it can point you to features like accidental touch protection and let you toggle them from the same screen.

ALSO READ: What Samsung phones will get the One UI 8.5 update

Samsung describes this as context-aware assistance, but in practice it feels more like the assistant finally understanding everyday language and mapping it to how the phone actually works.

Live answers without leaving the app

The other major change is real-time web search, powered by Perplexity. Bixby can now pull up current information from the open web and display it directly within its interface, rather than sending you off to a browser.

Ask for family-friendly hotels in Goa or other time-sensitive queries, and Bixby returns live results without breaking the flow. It is a small but important detail that makes the assistant feel more integrated into daily use.

Samsung says the new Bixby experience will roll out first via the One UI 8.5 beta in select markets, with wider availability planned later. Are you excited to finally enable Bixby on your Samsung phone again? Let us know in the comments section below.