Android 15 is on its way, and if you’re a major smartphone manufacturer like Samsung, you are already hard at work on preparing updates for your Android 14 devices. With Samsung, we’re used to its development cycle including a public beta period, where interested users are able to sign up to test the next big One UI release ahead of its final, stable, build. So far, though, that’s yet to get underway for Android 15, despite a number of reports suggesting it could get going last month. Now the latest chatter we’re seeing suggests that our wait could just be getting started.

We’re talking about One UI 7, which will deliver Android 15 to Samsung Galaxy phones. The past month has been positively rife with One UI 7 leaks and rumors, detailing possible changes to notifications, icon design, and more. But maybe the biggest question has concerned just when we’d see this beta actually get underway. Dates suggested as possibilities have come and gone with no sign of Samsung pressing “go” on the beta.

We’ve been expecting the Samsung One UI 7 beta program to launch for a while now, but it looks like we have to wait a little longer for the new Samsung software. However, a long-time leaker has just posted a lengthy One UI 7 changelog.

Ice Universe posted an apparent One UI 7 changelog on Weibo, and there are loads of tweaks and additions worth knowing. Check out the machine-translated screenshot below.

There are several notable visual changes worth highlighting, such as new system app icons, a new battery icon and charging animation, a new camera app UI, and new animations.

Ice Universe also asserts that you can choose between separate or unified dropdown menus for notifications and quick settings. That’s good news as earlier leaks suggested Samsung could switch to separate dropdown menus in One UI 7. So we’re glad to hear we might be given a choice between the two styles.

Other notable One UI 7 tweaks mentioned by the leaker include more desktop widgets, more lockscreen widgets, and large folder support. The latter in particular is a staple on some Android phones from rival brands.

We’ve been expecting the Samsung One UI 7 beta program to launch for a while now, but it looks like we have to wait a little longer for the new Samsung software. However, a long-time leaker has just posted a lengthy One UI 7 changelog.

Ice Universe posted an apparent One UI 7 changelog on Weibo, and there are loads of tweaks and additions worth knowing. Check out the machine-translated screenshot below.

There are several notable visual changes worth highlighting, such as new system app icons, a new battery icon and charging animation, a new camera app UI, and new animations.

Ice Universe also asserts that you can choose between separate or unified dropdown menus for notifications and quick settings. That’s good news as earlier leaks suggested Samsung could switch to separate dropdown menus in One UI 7. So we’re glad to hear we might be given a choice between the two styles.

Other notable One UI 7 tweaks mentioned by the leaker include more desktop widgets, more lockscreen widgets, and large folder support. The latter in particular is a staple on some Android phones from rival brands.

We heard our first One UI 6.1.1 leaks earlier this week, and it seems that Samsung is planning to bring plenty more AI features with this software. Now, a long-time leaker has revealed one more apparent AI feature.

Ice Universe claimed on X that the upcoming Samsung One UI 6.1.1 update will include an AI feature for portrait mode. More specifically, the tipster claims that “you can use AI to paint the portrait photos you take into various styles.”

It’s unclear whether this will be a highly customizable feature (e.g. using prompts), a handful of pre-defined on-device styles akin to filters, or something different altogether. We hope it’s not a few predefined styles as filters aren’t anything new.

In any event, this wouldn’t be the first time we see generative AI used for portraits on phones. Chinese brand vivo has offered generative portrait functionality on its high-end phones (seen below), allowing you to change the season in your portrait images. Your captured images are uploaded to vivo’s servers for processing, and the results aren’t convincing at all.

More recently, Xiaomi marketed an AI Portrait feature on the Xiaomi 14 series, which allows you to place yourself in a variety of scenes based on prompts. This doesn’t work locally, though, and requires you to feed previous photos of yourself as a reference so the feature can learn what you look like. This also doesn’t specifically work with portrait mode.

Either way, the aforementioned attempts to fuse generative AI and portraits have generally been very gimmicky. So our expectations are low for Samsung’s take on this in One UI 6.1.1, but we hope to be proven wrong.

It looks like Samsung is resuming the One UI 6.1 rollout for the Galaxy S22 series after putting a pause on its rollout last week. According to tipster Tarun Vats, a new One UI 6.1 build is now rolling out to users in South Korea. The firmware carries version numbers S908NKSU3EXE1/ S908NOKR3EXE1/S908NKSU3EXD7 and weighs around 3.2GB.

It looks like Samsung is resuming the One UI 6.1 rollout for the Galaxy S22 series after putting a pause on its rollout last week. According to tipster Tarun Vats, a new One UI 6.1 build is now rolling out to users in South Korea. The firmware carries version numbers S908NKSU3EXE1/ S908NOKR3EXE1/S908NKSU3EXD7 and weighs around 3.2GB.

It looks like Samsung is resuming the One UI 6.1 rollout for the Galaxy S22 series after putting a pause on its rollout last week. According to tipster Tarun Vats, a new One UI 6.1 build is now rolling out to users in South Korea. The firmware carries version numbers S908NKSU3EXE1/ S908NOKR3EXE1/S908NKSU3EXD7 and weighs around 3.2GB.

The Galaxy S22 series was launched in 2022, and the phones have aged quite gracefully thanks to the flagship headroom that they launched with. Samsung has newer flagships in the form of the Galaxy S24 series, but the company is bringing over its highlight Galaxy AI software features to the older Galaxy S22 series. The One UI 6.1 update with these features had just begun rolling out to the Galaxy S22 series, but it seems that rollout has been temporarily halted.

X user Tarun Vats noticed that the One UI 6.1 build for the Galaxy S22 series has been reverted from Samsung’s FOTA server. We spotted user reports on Samsung Community forums indicating that the Galaxy S22 series update was halted due to bugs. It appears that after updating, in some cases, the lock screen stops working, followed by the touch screen, prompting the need for a factory reset.

Update: May 2, 2024 (12:45 PM ET): As of now, the Galaxy S21 series and Galaxy Z Flip 3 are getting a limited taste of Galaxy AI features. The changelog for these phones mentions only the Circle to Search feature as part of the One UI 6.1 update. The Z Fold 3  seems to be getting many more AI features, including AI-generated wallpapers and Generative AI image editing.

Original article: May 2, 2024 (10:09 AM ET): Galaxy AI features are the hottest new set of features in One UI 6.1, and they played a big part in the Galaxy S24 experience. Samsung has been rolling out One UI 6.1 with Android 14 and Galaxy AI to the Galaxy S23 series, and the update recently reached the Galaxy S22 series. But the company is not done here, as the update has been spotted rolling out to the Galaxy S21 series and several of the company’s previous generation foldables, namely the Galaxy Z Fold 4, Galaxy Z Flip 4, Galaxy Z Fold 3, and Galaxy Z Flip 3.

The Galaxy S24 series launched with a variety of Galaxy AI features. We’ve already seen most of these features come to the Galaxy S23 series and several other flagship phones as part of the One UI 6.1 update, but it looks like the Galaxy S22 series is next in line.

Galaxy S22 owners in Korea have confirmed that Samsung has pushed the One UI 6.1 update to their phones (h/t: Tarun Vats), weighing in at 3.1GB. Check out the machine-translated screenshots below.

Around the time of the Samsung Galaxy S24 launch, Samsung assured us that One UI 6.1 — the software debuting with those phones — would be available on other devices. Now, the company is giving a timeline for when that rollout will begin.

Per Samsung, One UI 6.1 will start rolling out to the Galaxy S23 series (including the Galaxy S23 FE), the Galaxy Z Fold 5, the Galaxy Z Flip 5, and the Galaxy Tab S9 series starting in “late March.” Unfortunately, the company wasn’t more specific than that. We had previously heard this timeline through a leak, but seeing the company confirm it is nice.