LATEST ONE UI 2.5 NEWS
Introduction
Samsung releases a new iteration of its custom Android skin with every new flagship smartphone. The Galaxy S20 lineup brought One UI 2.1 in early 2020, it further refined the improvements that Samsung had introduced with One UI a couple of years ago.
Therefore, when it does arrive later this year, One UI 2.5 will also be an exercise in refinement. It will debut with the Galaxy Note 20 lineup and the Galaxy Fold 2 will most likely run on this version of Samsung's custom Android skin as well.
These will be the first devices to come with One UI 2.5 out of the box. Samsung will eventually bring the iteration to compatible devices, it will take a few months for the process to be completed.
One UI 2.5 design and enhancements
Samsung focused on improving existing functionality with One UI 2.1 with few but meaningful features. That may very well be the strategy that it opts for One UI 2.5 as well. While details are limited at this point in time, we can expect the user interface to be cleaned up even more so that it looks more visually appealing. Samsung will also make improvements to many of its native apps, as it has continued to do so with every iteration of One UI over the past couple of years.
One UI 2.5 features
One UI 2.1 was light on features but the few that it did introduce, like Music Share and Quick Share, were very meaningful. It was evident that Samsung wasn't stuffing the update with features just for the sake of offering a certain number of new features.
This meant that users could actually get some real value out of the features that were introduced with the update, not just use them once and forget that they ever existed. That's likely to be the case for One UI 2.5 as well.
Samsung hasn't dropped any hints about the One UI 2.5 features so far but a moderator on its official community forum for South Korea did mention that the update will bring Google's UI navigation gestures to third-party app launchers. This is something that's not been possible on Galaxy phones on One UI 2.0 or 2.1 so far.
One UI 2.5 Camera features
A whole host of camera features and modes were introduced with One UI 2.1. Single Take is perhaps one of the most useful, as it utilizes AI to capture up to four videos and ten photos using all of the different rear cameras so you can quickly get ultra-wide, Live Focus, wide, 15-second video clips and boomerangs of the moment you want to capture.
A Pro mode for Video was also introduced with One UI 2.1. It's likely that we'll see further refinement of these features with One UI 2.5. Among the improvements that we'd like to see on One UI 2.5 is for the Camera app to no longer default to a narrow angle when switching between the front and rear cameras.
One UI 2.5 release
One UI 2.5 debuted with the Galaxy Note 20, Galaxy Z Fold 2, and Galaxy Z Flip 5G and has since then been released for numerous other Galaxy devices, including the Galaxy S20 series, the original Galaxy Fold, the Galaxy A71, and even the Galaxy M21, one of Samsung's most affordable mid-range phones. More devices will get the update to One UI 2.5 soon, although many Galaxy phones and tablets will likely skip directly to One UI 3.0, which is based on Android 11.
