It wasn’t long ago that buying a Samsung phone meant saying goodbye to quick updates. Fortunately, Galaxy updates appear faster and for much longer on newer Samsung devices. With the update to One UI 4, Samsung has shown that phones don’t need to stick with old versions of Android for months on end. Just a month after the release of Android 12, Samsung has released One UI 4 based on Android 12 for the Galaxy S21 series. Samsung’s new commitment to update support is a feature — one of the most important features you can get on an expensive smartphone. The rest of the features will be less impactful than you’d probably hope because Samsung doesn’t like to rock the boat.
This is the one user interface you know
I wasn’t expecting Samsung to radically change the way One UI looks on the S21 series, even with the major update to Android 12. It still works the same way, so people won’t get confused when their phones restart after the upgrade. However, I was expecting more since Google has done many reviews of its own. There are some changes to the notification style, quick settings, and some outlying parts of the operating system, but if you were hoping for a solid implementation of Material You, you may be disappointed with Material You. While Samsung has updated some of its UI elements to match Android 12’s rounded aesthetic, none of them share the themes of the Material You device. Themes are there, but they are more limited than in pixels.
Samsung extracts color palettes from background images, but they’re bolder than the desaturated hues offered by Google (and there aren’t a lot of options). I liked this at first, but some of the sets, especially those pulled from more vibrant backgrounds, can end up looking a little overdone. A compromise between Google’s precision and Samsung’s boldness might be ideal. Icon attributes are disabled by default, as are pixels. However, activating icon themes only affects Samsung’s own apps. Even Google Apps that support themes on Pixels will still be without themes in One UI 4, but Google Widgets will He does Work with the topic. The apps themselves support the color palettes in One UI 4, but Samsung apps don’t use the theme as much as Google apps do.
In a new development, Samsung is coloring the lock screen clock and notifications based on the lock screen wallpaper. This is separate from the rest of the system theme, and this makes more sense to me than Google’s way of changing the entire theme whenever you set it also Lock screen or home screen wallpaper.
One UI 4 generally has an uneven implementation of themes. See below, Google widgets are themed, but icons are not. Meanwhile, Samsung’s icons use theme colors (usually), but its UI elements do not. We know that Google’s “Monet” system is not currently available to other OEMs, so this may be the reason for the differences. I feel like this will take a few releases to work, unlike moving to Material Design for the OG or navigation gestures. Some OEMs will do a better job than others, but so far all we’ve seen is Samsung’s actions.
If you’re a long-time Samsung user who’s attached to the company’s bundled apps, you’ll likely be happier with One UI 4 than most. These apps got a host of small but thoughtful improvements. For example, you can search for media in the Messages app, and the browser will default to private mode. The Samsung Health app now has more gender-inclusive options, and the layout is easier to navigate. Here’s one for everyone: The Camera app now displays zoom levels as numbers instead of wireframe groups, making… Pretty much More logical.
Samsung rolled out a feature called RAM Plus several months ago, allowing phones to reserve 4GB of internal storage space as virtual RAM. Although the S21 family has between 8 and 12GB of RAM, RAM Plus is on by default and can’t be disabled in Android 12. I don’t understand why Samsung would waste storage space on something that has little use when it doesn’t. You can even allocate storage space for seamless updates. I hope Android 12L includes a toggle for RAM Plus. However, I found that performance was largely unchanged from Android 11. The S21+ is still a very fast phone, and I didn’t see an issue with scrolling lag.
But it’s also Android 12
I’m bummed Samsung hasn’t done more with Material You, but things are still evolving. Future updates to Android 12 could bring more theme functionality to OEMs. It’s not just the visual changes we can look forward to – the update to Android 12 also removed a feature I use all the time. Just like Google’s Pixel phones, the S21 with Android 12 loses the ability to control Cast volume using buttons on your phone. Thanks to a legal dispute (presumably caused by the Sonos mess), a fix should be available in Android 12L. It’s still frustrating to lose a feature like this in what appears to be an “upgrade.”
Since One UI 4 is based on Android 12, it has all the deep system improvements that Google introduced on the new Pixel phones. Many of these changes relate to privacy and security, which is always appreciated in this day and age. However, Samsung doesn’t get all the credit, as you’ll find the same things, more or less, on other Android 12 phones. Samsung has tweaked features like the new privacy dashboard and sensor alerts to look and function like part of One UI. However, Samsung has had some good results when it comes to battery usage tools. While Google trimmed down the battery menu in Android 12 to only show the past 24 hours, Samsung has kept the “Since last charge” display as well as trends over the past seven days. The device care menu also has a new emoji to tell you how happy your phone is. Okay, Samsung.
I tested One UI 4 on the Galaxy S21+, which I think is a really underappreciated member of the S21 family. I chose this phone because One UI 4 isn’t available on the Z Fold3 yet, and I’m very excited about it. I love how powerful multi-window is on the Z Fold3, and One UI 4 should make it even better. On the S21, Samsung’s multi-window functionality feels smoother now. Applications have become easier to resize, and many things that were once prone to crashing are now very stable. I was also able to resize the windows that are actively playing video without breaking anything.
And points for speed
Just a few years ago, Samsung was lucky to complete an Android update in six months, but things have really changed. Just a few weeks after Google rolled out Android 12, Samsung has gotten OTAs for its most popular phones of the year, and the rest of its high-end devices will be available soon.
I’ve been happy to see OEMs (including but not limited to Samsung) pledging to keep phones updated for longer. I would never ask anyone to continue using a smartphone that doesn’t get security patches in this day and age. So, as far as I’m concerned, the end of the manufacturer’s update warranty is the expiration date of the phone. Samsung charges a lot for its devices, and it doesn’t exactly make major feature improvements, but it has shown that it can deliver an update experience that is very close to Google’s.
