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It's been nearly six years since Samsung introduced us to Bixby — the latest in the long line of Samsung voice assistants. The company's software has evolved a lot over these six years to become one of the main reasons why we love Samsung phones today. Bixby, on the other hand, is yet to reach its final form. I can't say I am a huge fan of Bixby, but I launch it occasionally to see if it has learned some new tricks to catch up with other digital assistants. I stumbled upon the Bixby call text feature this time while setting up and exploring all the settings on my Galaxy S23.

Before I share my experience of using Bixby text call feature, I think it would be fair to explain what it really is and how you can enable it on your Samsung phone. I don't expect everyone to keep up with Bixby's features after all, especially when more than half of them don't work properly. With that said — let's dive in!

What is Bixby text call?

An image of a person holding a Galaxy S23 showing the Bixby text call feature in action.

The Bixby text call feature is Samsung's version of Google's Call Screening, with which you can let the assistant answer an incoming call for you and ask who's calling and why. Bixby text call goes a step further by letting you type out responses in text for it to say to the caller. This particular feature was also in the news recently when Samsung announced it's using AI to generate a copy of your voice to answer calls and speak the typed responses for you. The AI-generated voice copy is only available in Korean for now, but you can still use Bixby text call to answer and respond to calls for you if/when you are unable to do it yourself for whatever reason. I wasn't expecting this to work flawlessly, given Bixby's slow, clunky, and inaccurate nature, but I wanted to try it regardless to see if it works. Here's how I enabled it on my Galaxy S23:

How to enable and use Bixby text call?

Bixby Text Call was announced alongside One UI 5, meaning you'll need your phone to be on one of the latest versions of Samsung software for it to work. You can stop by our Samsung Android 13 tracker to find out which Samsung phones are currently on the latest One UI software. Here's how you can enable Bixby text call on your Samsung phone running One UI 5.0 and above:

  1. Open the phone app on your Samsung phone and select the three-dot icon located in the top right corner of the screen.
  2. Now, select Settings and choose Bixby text call to find a toggle to enable it on your phone.
  3. Simply enable the toggle, and you should be good to go now.

You've now enabled the Bixby text call feature on your phone, and here's how you can use it to let Bixby answer the calls for you:

  1. Once you enable the feature, you'll start seeing a Bixby text call button on the call screen for an incoming call.
  2. Simply select that to see a Swipe to continue option to allow Bixby to answer the call for you.
  3. From here, Bixby will accept the call for you and tell the caller that you're using Bixby to talk.
  4. You'll see a bunch of quick responses that you can select for Bixby to say to the caller, or you can type a custom response using the chat box below.
  5. Bixby will automatically transcribe — or at least try to — whatever the caller says, so you know how to respond.
  6. You can either continue using the quick or typed responses to chat or use the Voice call or End call buttons to speak yourself or end the call.

And that's how you can use Bixby text call to answer calls and respond to people for you on your Samsung phone. You can also go back to the Bixby text call feature settings page within the Phone app to type and save a variety of quick responses too. I saved a custom response that I think works for all callers, and it's the one I used the most for this particular test. Notably, you can also choose between four different voices in English and up to five different voices in Korean. They all sounded very automated, so your caller will definitely know that it's an automated voice response and not an actual person talking. Some of them may freak out and hang up the call to try again later, while others will probably play along to see how it goes. At least, that's how I would summarize my experience when I used this feature for a couple of days.

What is it like using Bixby text call?

The problem with Bixby is that it's not as popular as Apple's Siri or Google Assistant for people to understand what's happening immediately. It's bold of Samsung to assume that everyone knows what Bixby is because the first thing it says after picking up a call is, "Hi. I'm using Bixby to talk for me." One of my friends, who doesn't keep up with everything happening in the world of technology and had no idea what Bixby is, simply hung up the call when they heard an automated voice instead of mine. The same thing happened with a delivery person who wanted to call and check whether I was available to receive the package but ended up hanging up the call when they heard an automated voice.

A few of my close friends who had an idea about Bixby and knew me by my background of work were quick to understand that I was probably trying something new. They played along and ended up chatting with an automated voice before I accepted the call myself. So if you ask me whether this feature works as advertised then, I'll say yes, but it's not without its flaws. Besides the limited pre-recorded and the automated nature of the voice, I wasn't particularly impressed by Bixby's transcription too.

My expectations from Bixby voice transcription were low, but I wasn't ready for it to fail with simple words too. There are times when I had no idea what the person would say because Bixby ended up getting everything wrong. Here's a screenshot of the chat I had with Bixby when I tried the feature from my backup phone.

An image showing a screenshot showing the Bixby text call feature in action.

I expect Google to do a much better job of transcribing, so Google's Assistant Call Screening is probably better than Bixby text call right now. I haven't had a chance to try it for a comparison, so I'll reserve my judgment on it.

All things considered, the Bixby text call kind of works, and it's there if you really need it. It would help if the transcription were any better and also if Bixby was more relevant for people to understand the situation and know what's happening. But that's sadly not the case, which is why I am going to disable this particular feature for now, so I don't accidentally trigger Bixby and freak out someone who trying to reach me. Perhaps I'll revisit it once again when Samsung rolls out the AI-generated copy of your voice in English to see how it works.

In the meantime, be sure to let me know if you use Bixby text call or Google's Assistant Call Screening to handle your phone calls for you.