Beta versions of One UI 7 show a massively improved if somewhat contentious upgrade to Samsung’s user experience. The interface has evolved and, according to some, become a lot more like iOS. Unlike iOS 18 however One UI 7 seems to be a much more well put together piece of software.
While Apple users are calling iOS 18 one of the biggest missed opportunities in recent years, One UI 7 continues to get more people excited for the final release. It also helps that Galaxy AI — powered by Google’s Gemini now — is leagues ahead of Apple Intelligence. Putting aside the hilariously inaccurate notification summarization feature, the image editing with Apple Intelligence is very poor too.The delays that One UI 7 is facing are likely Samsung’s attempt to not pull an Apple with its newest flagships. Like the iPhone 16 the most heavily marketed features for the Galaxy S25 series is AI. But after the initial failures of Apple’s AI Samsung may be taking a much more cautious approach to avoid backlash.
Many users called the Galaxy S25 reveal a very underwhelming event. | Video credit — Samsung
The initial update for Galaxy S25 phones is also a whopping 24 GB. This dramatic increase in size compared to its predecessors very likely has something to do with AI. An accelerated rollout for One UI 8 may be a way to quell the irritation some users have felt ever since the industry shifted to marketing AI. So we can cautiously keep our fingers crossed for more non-AI features in One UI 8.However this also means that One UI 8 is unlikely to be a substantive update after One UI 7. I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing: not every software or hardware release needs to be a game changer.
But it does mean that for the time being the biggest changes Samsung users are going to see will be focused on Artificial Intelligence.
