Samsung's Bixby voice assistant has had a mixed history, with public opinion ranging from "it's fine I guess" to "get this off my phone." Even though the days of dedicated Bixby hardware buttons on phones are over, Samsung is still pushing forward with the assistant. During today's Unpacked event, the company revealed that performance improvements to Bixby are in development.

Today's Unpacked event primarily focused on the Galaxy Watch 3, Galaxy Z Fold 3, and Galaxy Z Flip 3. However, Samsung also took a few seconds to mention Bixby, specifically its performance. "Bixby is now 35% faster than before because it detects and processes your voice all on-device without having to go through the server," one of the presenters said.

The functionality sounds similar to improvements in the works for other digital assistants. Google started moving some voice processing off-server in 2019, with the release of the Pixel 4 and 4 XL. Some of Amazon's smart speakers can recognize select Alexa queries without an internet connection, and iOS 15 allows Siri to partially run offline.

Samsung didn't mention if the faster Bixby performance is coming to other phones.