Samsung’s design approach to One UI 4 has garnered generally positive feedback and vibes from both users and critics. With the announcement of the One UI 5 beta in August and many many of Samsung’s devices getting the stable version of One UI 5 since early November, the brand has opened its microsite to talk more about what makes One UI 5 special.
For starters, a new function called Bixby Text Call is utilizing text-to-speech to its fullest by integrating into phone calls where you can now type what’s in your mind and then let Samsung’s intelligent assistant Bixby turn that into voice – perfect for the busy or noisy moments.
Created to match your daily activities, the Routines feature focuses on adjusting itself based on your actions by launching or changing specific parameters. Hard to understand? Imagine you need to exercise and you prefer notifications to be off during the session – One UI 5 can do that for you automatically when it detects you engaging in physical activities.
The overall UI in terms of icons and shapes has also been mildly tuned to provide a fresh look while staying “ICONic” while font sizes within the notification panel now make more sense by highlighting important elements like Call and Decline buttons or enlarged fonts for caller names, etc.
Lock Screen customization is also a part of the big game where a diverse range of elements can be changed according to one’s preference including pop-up notifications, clock styles, and even short video clips to remind you of your best memories at all times.
Now speaking from the efficiency part which is the productive people’s best interest, One UI 5 will introduce the new Stacked Widgets to keep your Home Screen packed with as much information at a single glance while keeping it neat and tidy.
Users can now drag and drop widgets on top of each other and swipe left or right to scroll through each one, essentially turning them into a small dashboard-like panel. Additionally, Smart Widgets can also recommend users in terms of what to place and how to place them.
Some other notable quality-of-life improvements include:
- Extract text from the image and paste it into notes
- New Connected menu now hosts Quick Share, Samsung DeX, Smart View, and more
- New Security and Privacy dashboard for quick and easy-to-understand context and policy tuning
- Heightened alert system that reminds the user to double confirm upon sending sensitive information to other contacts
Samsung also revealed that devices eligible for Android 13 OS update will arrive much earlier than its competitors due to close collaboration with Google and they are developing features as separated modules so that can be selectively integrated into different classes of smartphones and tablets without much hassle.
More information about One UI 5 can be found here.
A little bit of Q&A
Aside from the general announcement, we also got in contact with a Samsung representative and had a quick Q&A section that addresses some of our thoughts.
- Q: How can users report or request feature changes on One UI?
- A: The best approach is via Samsung Members but “other platforms” are also available – for example, through social media and whatnot. Of course, Samsung Members will still be the main channel for all these feature requests and bug reports.
- Q: There are more settings that start to complicate things (i.e. camera app but now we have more features from the gallery app and some require external downloads like the Camera Assistant etc) – will these features be integrated and streamlined into One UI?
- A: That is actually the ultimate goal of Samsung which as you know, is an ongoing process. Touching on the topic of Camera Assistant, we believed that offering it to selected phones as of now is to keep One UI 5 as lightweight as possible but of course, it is a complimentary approach and will change depending on user feedback and demand
- Q: Why is Good Lock only available in certain regions?
- A: While it is indeed a good offering in the form of an app, we plan to directly integrate it into One UI in the near future
- Q: As we know, the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip3/4 does not have Samsung DeX. What is the reason to exclude DeX from the Flip series?
- A: The idea behind the Z series did not include DeX as a priority from the get-go but we’ll see if demands are strong enough to bring that topic back to the discussion table
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