Samsung takes a decisive step in redesigning its voice assistant. With the launch of the beta version, One UI 8.5 on February 20, 2026, the new Bixby finally leaves the concept stage to land on Galaxy smartphones, in several countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and South Korea. A meticulously orchestrated release, just five days before the Galaxy Unpacked event in San Francisco.
A total overhaul, not an update
For years, Bixby has suffered from a reputation as a rigid assistant, incapable of understanding anything other than precise, pre-formatted commands. This new version breaks with that logic. Samsung is repositioning Bixby as a conversational agent, capable of interpreting requests made in natural language, without the user needing to know the exact name of a setting or menu.
In concrete terms, a sentence like 'I don't want the screen to turn off while I'm cooking' is now enough to activate the correct option. The assistant understands the intention behind the words, reduces the number of steps required, and can even diagnose a problem with the device, such as a battery draining overnight, by cross-referencing local settings and search results. This is a profound paradigm shift compared to the old Bixby.
Natural language as a control interface
The central promise of this update is simple: fully control a Galaxy smartphone without ever opening a settings menu. Samsung emphasizes that Bixby can now identify the phone's current settings and propose several solutions tailored to the device's actual situation, not generic answers. This reduces execution errors and speeds up daily tasks.
This approach places Samsung in direct competition with assistants like Siri and Google Gemini, both of which have integrated generative AI capabilities in recent months. The difference Samsung highlights is the depth of system integration: where other assistants delegate to third-party apps, Bixby acts directly within the Galaxy interface, frictionlessly. This is a structural advantage that Samsung seeks to turn into a differentiating argument.
Real-time web search: Perplexity's advantage
Beyond device control, the new Bixby includes a functionality for real-time internet search, with results displayed directly in the assistant's overlay, without redirection to a browser. When a user asks, for example, "Find hotels with a children's pool in Seoul," Bixby displays the available options without interrupting the conversation flow.
This component relies partly on an integration with Perplexity, which provides Bixby with synthetic responses from the web. The connection between Samsung and Perplexity is not new: the collaboration was already mentioned during the launch of the Galaxy S25. But its deployment in a native voice assistant, on hundreds of millions of potential devices, represents a significant change in scale for this generative search engine.
A calendar aligned with the Galaxy Unpacked on February 25
The launch of this beta the same week as the Galaxy Unpacked 2026 is no coincidence. Samsung will officially unveil the Galaxy S26, S26+, and S26 Ultra on Wednesday, February 25th at 7 PM (French time) from San Francisco. The new Bixby is expected to play a central role in this presentation, alongside the so-called "unified" camera system that the brand has begun to tease.
The strategy is clear: make One UI 8.5 and the new Bixby one of the software selling points of the Galaxy S26, just like the hardware performance. A wider rollout is planned in other countries after this event. France is not yet on the list of initial markets, but the update should arrive progressively by spring, likely in parallel with the distribution of the Galaxy S26.
Credibility to build
Samsung has a peculiar history with Bixby. The assistant was launched with great fanfare in 2017, has been regularly reformed, and yet never fully adopted. This new version benefits from a favorable window: the market for generative AI assistants is still under construction, no player has yet consolidated its dominance on Android, and Samsung has an installed base of several hundred million Galaxy devices.
The beta version available today is a strong signal. It indicates that Samsung views the Unpacked schedule as an opportunity to seize, not just a presentation date. It remains to be seen whether Galaxy users, often skeptical of Bixby, will give it another chance. The product finally seems to live up to the promise. The real test begins now.
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