Bixby has been played down by Samsung which even was rumoured to be pulling the voice activation software but now it seems to have come back with a vengeance with a new UI makeover. Samsung mentioned during its event that Bixby will work 35 percent faster on the Galaxy Z Flip 3 and the Galaxy Z Fold 3. This improvement is a result of on-device voice processing rather than going through Samsung’s servers.

On-device voice processing is done via the NPU (Neural Processing Unit) that is embedded in modern day smartphone processors. The company hasn’t revealed whether this improvement will come to other older Galaxy devices, though.

The Tame Apple Press has pointed out that this is just copying Apple which has been processing some Siri requests through on-device voice processing, since with iOS 15. Although Google has been processing some Google Assistant requests right on the devices since 2019. Alexa smart speakers can do that as well.

It is a moot point if any of this is worth the investment. Bixby has to compete with Google assistant which is fast and simple already.