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Samsung partners with Perplexity to make Bixby actually useful
- Samsung announced this morning that an updated Bixby assistant will be available in One UI 8.5.
- This refreshed Bixby will be able to control device settings via natural language and connect to Perplexity to pull info from the web.
- The initial announcement is no longer available; we’ve asked Samsung why.
Bixby hasn’t seemed like much of a priority for Samsung lately, but it looks like that’s changing with the upcoming One UI 8.5 update. Earlier this morning, Samsung announced a beta for the latest version of its assistant, “upgraded to operate as a conversational device agent” that leverages Perplexity to answer complex questions.
Samsung, oddly enough, has since removed its announcement, with its URL currently pointing to a Page not found error. According to the announcement’s text as preserved by Droid Life, the new Bixby will let you control your device’s settings and features by making requests in natural language. For questions about topics other than your phone itself, Bixby will connect to Perplexity to pull info from the web.
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Bixby’s ability to control your phone through natural language builds on work Samsung’s been doing in its Settings app since One UI 7. On the latest stable One UI builds, you’re already able to search your settings using natural language — for example, you can search “my eyes are tired” in Settings to surface relevant options like screen brightness. As of One UI 8.5, Bixby will be able to make the same sorts of tweaks from anywhere on your device.
Samsung’s new Perplexity integration will let the assistant answer complex queries more in the way Gemini does, generating rich responses with text and graphics informed by web search results, right inside the Bixby UI.
It’s not clear what this new Perplexity partnership means for Gemini’s relationship with Samsung. The Galaxy S25 series shipped with a customized version of Gemini built in, and Samsung devices have been prominent in Google’s Gemini announcements and marketing. With Bixby now able to provide similar functionality, we may see less Gemini branding around future Samsung device launches.
Samsung’s announcement said that the new version of Bixby will be available on One UI 8.5 “in select markets.” One UI 8.5 is in beta now and is expected to launch in stable form on the Galaxy S26 series in the next few weeks.
We’ve reached out to Samsung to ask about its announcement from this morning that was removed; we’ll update this story with any info we get in response.
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