Samsung’s smartest move with One UI 7 is knowing what to ‘steal’

this A UI 7 beta It finally started and overall it was a pleasant surprise. Even I, a die-hard Samsung fan who has been using Samsung products for years, didn’t like what I saw in the leaks. It looked like nothing more than a rip-off of iOS, and I was ready to hate everything about it. Now I have One UI 7 on my computer Galaxy S24 Ultramy opinion has changed. One UI 7 is not an iOS clone, and I like it.

A UI 7 built on Android 15but that shouldn’t fool you. Android 15 is a minor iterative update for the Pixel, but the changes Samsung made to One UI more than make up for it. This is the most significant update to Samsung’s software skins since One UI debuted on the Galaxy S10.

Above is the first photo of the official version of One UI 7, taken at Samsung’s SDC developer conference. There’s a lot to tell from these images: Bubble-like notifications display almost no message, a Quick Settings panel looks like it was taken off the iPhone 16, and worst of all, the two panels have separated, just like Like iOS and Maybe Android 16.

The reality with One UI 7 is quite different. The redesigned notifications are very sleek, but unlike what we saw at SDC, they display a lot of information and are just as helpful to me as before. The quick settings panel has also changed, combining separate brightness and sound panels into one. It’s still similar to iOS, but when I use it, it doesn’t feel like Apple’s Control Center. It’s the same Quick Settings panel I’m used to, but with a new coat of paint and some useful new buttons.

As for separating notifications from quick settings, this is default behavior in One UI 7 beta and even now. I’m leaving it enabled for now to see if I can get used to it, but if I don’t like it, there’s good news: You can easily turn it off and return to the unified notification shade we know and love.

Icons and widgets tell a similar story. The new icons are bright and bold, and they all look better, except for the camera icon, which bears a striking resemblance to the iPhone’s camera. Aside from the camera, these icons don’t look like they’re from iOS. Samsung has had this fun, vibrant aesthetic for a while, and this is where it evolves. The new widgets are better than before, and the large folders are a welcome addition.

I can’t take screenshots or screen recordings to show you how smooth One UI 7 is. The beta version is generally full of bugs and lags, but the only place I felt it was when I long-pressed the lock screen to edit. Otherwise, it’s the smoothest experience ever on a Samsung phone. In fact, I put the S24 Ultra next to the iPhone 16 Pro and I couldn’t tell any difference in smoothness or responsiveness. The S24 Ultra has caught up, with smooth animations for unlocking, opening apps, switching apps, and returning to the home screen. If any of you remember how smooth Android was when Project Butter was released in 4.1 Jellybean, that was a huge difference between One UI 6 and One UI 7.

Small improvements in quality of life are only appreciated once you’ve used them, and of all the big changes Samsung has made, my favorite ones are the relatively small ones. The Clock app now allows you to group related alerts and turn them on and off with a single button. I use an alarm clock a lot, especially waking up at different times so I can take my meds and go back to sleep for a while. Now I don’t have to scroll through a list of alerts to check them; they’re at the top and connected together.

These are the most important changes in your day-to-day life, and staring at screenshots or watching videos of One UI 7 in action is no substitute for using it and experiencing it yourself.

There are definitely some hints of iOS in One UI 7. Plagiarism has become a dirty word, but it shouldn’t be. Products have been borrowing from each other since time immemorial, and that’s not going to stop anytime soon. One UI for Android or one based on iOS would be great – iOS is a mature operating system with a lot of features I’d like to see on Android. Likewise, I want to use many of the advantages of Android on my iPad.

It’s important to make the functionality you implement unique and not soullessly cut and pasted from a competitor’s product. I think Samsung’s Now Bar has nailed this, especially compared to some of the Dynamic Island copies from other Android OEMs. OnePlus adds similar feature Oxygen operating system 15While OnePlus’ implementation has a lot of useful features, the way it wraps around the selfie camera is a little too close to the dynamic island for my liking, especially since it’s a great way to get fingerprints on the selfie camera.

Samsung’s Now Bar has been moved to the left of the selfie camera, which I prefer. It uses “chips” that Android has had for a while, such as the green chip that appears in the notification shade when you make a call to show call time. Samsung has the same feature and is bringing it to more apps in One UI 7, such as stopwatch and voice recorder. It also displays it as a “now bar” at the bottom of the lock screen.

I think the first One UI 7 beta is an achievement that Samsung developers should be proud of. We expect betas to have bugs, and I expect One UI 7 to be particularly bad after multiple beta delays. However, these delays have paid off. Aside from my phone sometimes getting warm and the aforementioned lag when trying to edit the lock screen, the first One UI 7 beta is practically perfect. Everything looks and feels what I expect from a stable release, and all new features work as expected.

Many of us view companies like Samsung as faceless, soulless conglomerates and nothing more. Most of the time, we should do this. I’m not under any delusion that Samsung is somehow my friend. This is a company that wants to squeeze money out of my wallet.

But we shouldn’t overlook the people who work behind the scenes. From the moment One UI 7 launched, it was clear that the people who made it worked hard to make it the best version of One UI possible, and these people deserve some credit and appreciation.

One UI 7 is not an iOS clone, just like iOS is not an Android clone, and it finally adds the T9 dialer, icon themes, and widgets. This is a natural evolution of a mature operating system, and I like where it’s going.

Samsung’s smartest move with One UI 7 is to check out iOS and other Android skins and decide what to adopt. It breathed new life into my Galaxy S24 Ultra when I was starting to get tired of Android and One UI. I think many people will feel the same way when using it.