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Samsung is copying the Pixel Watch 4's best virtual assistant trick
- Early leaked builds of Samsung One UI 9 are starting to reveal upcoming Bixby features.
- Samsung is working on support for a raise-to-talk gesture for activating its virtual assistant.
- We also see evidence of Bixby preparing new file upload support.
How many different ways do you interact with your phone’s virtual assistant? Wake words are probably the most impressive option there, really driving home the experience that we’ve got something like a real personal assistant living in our phone. But when you’re looking to keep things low-key (or maybe avoid activating every device within earshot), you’ve still got options, whether pulling up the app directly, or using your phone’s side-button shortcut. And with One UI 9, Samsung Galaxy devices could be adding yet another.
Even with the vast majority of Samsung Galaxy phones and tablets still waiting for One UI 8.5 (some are only just now getting their betas started), we’re already learning about upcoming One UI 9 developments courtesy of an early leaked build.
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For this, we’re looking at Bixby version 4.1.10.2. So far, this only seems to support One UI 9, and we haven’t been able to get the app working on a Galaxy S26 running One UI 8.5 (the current Bixby version is 4.0.51.0, for reference).
Digging through this release, though, we’ve spotted some text strings that reveal a new option for activating Bixby:
<string name="settings_raise_to_talk_title">Raise to talk</string>
<string name="settings_gesture_wakeup_description">If you turn this on, you can start to talk with Bixby by holding your phone up and close to your mouth and speaking directly to the mic.</string>
<string name="settings_gesture_wakeup_description_2">Raise to talk is unavailable while Bixby is already busy with another task that you've given.</string>That pretty clearly makes the case for a new gesture-based option for triggering your assistant, with Bixby responding to you picking up your phone.
While we don’t recall seeing any other virtual assistants on phones offer this same kind of gesture trigger, there was a rumor years ago that Google was considering it for the Pixel 4. And then, just this past fall, we did see Google deliver this kind of gesture support to its wearables, with a raise-to-talk mode on the Pixel Watch 4.
Considering how many times a day we pick up our phones, though, we wonder what the potential might look like here for false activations. The “close to your mouth” language could read as suggesting there’s a volume threshold involved, and the phone will ignore quieter, more distant voice input. But right now that’s largely speculation, and we’re definitely to going to want to see how well this discriminates in practice.
Beyond this gesture-activation business, we’re also seeing what looks like early support for sharing files with Bixby:
Text strings in this version of the app allude to working with attachments from your camera, screen captures, saved photos, or other, general files. We’re not yet sure exactly what Samsung has planned for these, so we’ll be paying extra-close attention to future Bixby builds for additional evidence.
Samsung’s One UI 9, based on Android 17, has not yet entered a public beta. It’s possible we may see Samsung get access started by summer, but right now the company’s timetable is far from certain.
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