Earlier today, Samsung unveiled two new foldable phones—W25 and W25 Flip—for China. They share many hardware features with the Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition and the Galaxy Z Flip 6. However, they have one new software trick currently missing on Galaxy phones worldwide: next-generation Bixby.
New version of Bixby can understand natural language easily
The new version of Bixby, which debuted on the W25 and the W25 Flip, is powered by large language models (LLMs). So, it is much better in understanding natural language and context. It can understand sentences that have multiple commands. Samsung has offered a few examples of how the new Bixby is better than the current version.
This version of Bixby is already available on some new high-end Samsung appliances.
If you say, “It's cloudy outside. What should I wear to work today?” Bixby will tell you the weather projections and ask you to wear a raincoat on the way to work because there are chances of rain. Then, if you ask, “How much time will it take for me to reach there?” Bixby will understand that you are talking about navigating to your workplace, and it will show you the directions and estimated arrival time based on traffic conditions.
Bixby can also offer detailed, step-by-step procedures for performing tasks on your Galaxy phone. For example, if you ask how to add a watermark to images captured using the camera, Bixby will explain the camera feature in an easy-to-understand manner.
It can fetch information from the phone's apps and understand the context. So, when you ask when your family function is, it will search the Calendar app and fetch you the related entry with the function's name, date, time, and location.
The new version of Bixby can also understand what's on the screen and offer contextual help. For example, when you are chatting with a friend and if they tell you to meet them at a particular place, you can initiate Bixby and ask it to “navigate here.” Bixby will search the screen for location information and then use the maps app to start navigation.
New Bixby has a modern UI design
From what appears in the images, there the new version of Bixby has a new UI design that takes up the full screen, and you can converse with it through text or voice. It suggests some commands at the top. You can either use those commands or type your own. It also has multi-colored animations, similar to Gemini and new Siri.
You can also summon it anywhere on the phone. For example, you can summon it during a conversation with your friend and ask about things on the screen. You can also summon it while browsing the web and ask it to convert the webpage into your language. It can also generate documents (document, presentation, or spreadsheet) based on your requirements.
When can you use the new version of Bixby?
Right now, the new version of Bixby is only available on the W25 and the W25 Flip in China. It could expand to other phones soon. While the new version of Bixby isn't available globally yet, Samsung could release it across the world (based on language support) with One UI 7.0 sometime early next year.
