Samsung’s One UI 8.5 update could be even bigger than we thought

Samsung is releasing a new One UI 8.5 beta this week, and it’s promising to add even more significant new features than we were expecting.

We’ve known that One UI 8.5 was going to be a major update well before the first beta rolled out, but the next beta could be even bigger than predicted.

A new One UI 8.5 beta is dropping soon, and as spotted by SamMobile, it could add Direct Voicemail. Much like Apple’s Live Voicemail, your Galaxy smartphone will be able to take messages for you when you miss a call.

Elsewhere, the new beta is expected to come accompanied by a new kernel version, which should mean a boost to all-around performance and stability.

Bolstered Bixby

Samsung has also confirmed previous reports that One UI 8.5 is going to feature a major upgrade to Samsung’s unloved Bixby assistant. Backed by large language models (LLMs) and Perplexity, it’ll be imbued with the more natural and conversational style that we’ve come to expect from modern AI assistants.

In a (weirdly since deleted) post to its newsroom, Samsung revealed that the new Bixby would be better able to understand context when you ask it a question, as well as to interact with on-device settings.

I’ll be able to keep the screen on while you’re looking at it, for example, rather than simply offering a dumb list of manual instructions. Ask it why the screen is remaining on in your pocket, meanwhile, and Bixby will understand that you might need to activate the Accidental Touch Protection setting.

The aforementioned Perplexity implementation will enable Bixby to execute real-time web searches, supplying the results within the Bixby UI rather than jumping into an app.