While Motorola focuses on hardware, Samsung has begun the global rollout of One UI 8.5 for its 2024 and 2025 flagships. Following its debut on the Galaxy S26 series in February, the “Wave 1” update is hitting the Galaxy S25 and S24 series this week.
The Rise of “Conversational Bixby”
The headline feature is a total reimagining of Bixby, which now integrates Perplexity and Gemini natively. Users can now control their phones using natural, context-aware language—for example, saying “Bixby, find that receipt I screenshotted yesterday and email it to my accountant”—and the AI will execute the multi-step task autonomously.
Privacy and “Now Nudge”
One UI 8.5 also introduces Privacy Protection, an on-device AI tool that automatically detects and blurs sensitive information like credit card numbers or home addresses whenever you share a screenshot or document. Another addition, “Now Nudge,” analyzes your current app activity to provide contextual suggestions, such as offering a “Split Screen” shortcut when you’re looking at a restaurant on Maps while texting a friend.
With the beta program already expanding to the Galaxy S23 series and Galaxy A36 in India and Korea, Samsung is on track to have its entire modern ecosystem running the new AI-centric software by the end of June 2026.
