One UI 8.5 is the upcoming update for Samsung’s Galaxy phones, and despite the lack of a whole number designation, it’s set to be an enormous one. Crammed full of new Galaxy AI-powered features, One UI 8.5 is the release that big Samsung fans have been waiting for.
For the really eager, the One UI 8.5 beta has been an exciting preview of what’s to come. And now, a new version of that beta is rolling out, and it contains a new AI-powered voicemail that will revolutionize how you miss calls.
Direct Voicemail is coming
This is the fourth One UI 8.5 beta to hit our small screens, and as you’d expect, it comes with various fixes for bugs and problems that betas are known for. It fixes, amongst others, small bugs with the clock display, pasting into the dialer, and search history in the phone app — but we know everyone is most excited about the new voicemail feature.
Called Direct Voicemail, One UI 8.5’s newest addition is essentially the same as iOS’ Live Voicemail. Bypassing the regular carrier-hosted voicemail, Direct Voicemail records a missed call directly into your phone, and uses AI to create a live transcript as it’s being recorded. So if you’re not able to take a call, you can direct them to your voicemail, and still get an idea of what the caller wanted.
Since it’s not being sent to your carrier, it’s assumed this will all take place on your device, from the recording to the AI transcription. Hopefully, that means everything that’s recorded and transcribed stays private to your device, but we don’t have any confirmation of that yet.
The beta patch itself is 1.58GB in size, and comes with the February security patch. It’s been confirmed to be rolling out in South Korea, India, Germany, the UK, and the US. So far, it seems as if this beta version is coming to the Galaxy S25 range first, as there’s not been much word of it arriving on other devices.
