New details double down on early One UI 8 beta rollout

A new report indicates Samsung may be readying to launch the One UI 8 beta program very soon.

After a rocky One UI 7 rollout, Samsung seems more than ready to not disappoint its fans with a delayed One UI 8. Samsung seems to be going all in to ensure One UI 8 is released on time, even early, and now more evidence is pointing to this possibility being very real.

Earlier this month, it was reported that Samsung is planning to start the One UI 8 beta very soon. Now, earlier rumors are getting corroborated by Samsung itself, which has created a dedicated One UI 8 beta subforum for the Galaxy S25 series on its community website.

The subforum is found on the Samsung US community website. This suggests that US customers (as usual) may be among the first ones to get access to the beta version of the next major One UI software update. Meanwhile, South Korea is expected to be the only other market for the beta program at the beginning.

After the initial phase of the beta, other markets are expected to get access to it. Those are likely Germany, India, Poland, China, and the UK. So far, Samsung has not launched its beta program in other markets, and a change on that front is not expected at the moment.

For now, it's also not clear which Samsung Galaxy phones will be eligible to join the One UI 8 beta program. Owners of the Galaxy S25, S25+, and S25 Ultra are most likely to be able to test the new OS skin before it launches publicly.



On the other hand, the Galaxy S25 Edge, the slim beauty that recently got unveiled, may not be among the phones that get the beta. At least, that is based on Samsung excluding the Galaxy S Fan Edition (or FE) models from previous beta programs.

One UI 8 may not be a huge update, and won't likely bring as many new changes as One UI 7 did. There could be some tweaks and refinements, but don't expect huge changes from the Android 16-based skin.

Likely, the official, non-beta One UI 8 update will come to Galaxy phones by the end of the third quarter. Rumors are also saying that the upcoming Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Z Flip 7 devices may be launched sporting One UI 8 out of the box. Quite likely, for a certain period of time, only those and potentially the Galaxy S25 series will sport One UI 8 before it trickles down to other models.

One UI 7 was a bigger update than what One UI 8 is rumored to be. However, One UI 7 also saw quite a lot of struggles to get to the end users. The beta program continued for way longer than expected, then, when the stable version finally started rolling out, some markets had to see it stop and then start again, and there was also a revised schedule.

Meanwhile, as we already said, One UI 8 may not bring a lot of new things to your Galaxy phone. However, leaks indicate that a helpful Now Bar tweak is in the works. The Now Bar is the Dynamic Island-like feature that allows for a few controls from your lock screen, and reportedly, with One UI 8, the Now Bar may get even more useful.

In the meantime, Samsung's main competitor, Apple, is also gearing up for a big release in September. We expect iOS 19 to bring some substantial changes, and we'll know more about what those will be soon, with Apple's WWDC 2025 coming on June 9.

Meanwhile, Google is infusing Gemini, the company's generative AI tech, basically everywhere and seems to be focusing on AI quite a lot (not that Apple or Samsung aren't doing that too, though...).

As for One UI 8, we'll have to wait a bit more and see what other tweaks and changes it will bring.