Samsung One UI: What It Is (And How To Get It)


It’s no secret that smartphone makers like to add their own embellishments to Android. Unfortunately, a lot of those extras don’t really add to the experience. Samsung’s new One UI has raised the bar however, showing that ‘custom’ doesn’t have to mean ‘worse’. Here’s what you need to know.

The big focus with One UI is simplification without dumbing everything down. One of the big criticisms levelled against iOS is that it keeps things user-friendly but takes away the ability to tinker. By contrast, Samsung has done a great job of making things easier for users while retaining the Android Pie backend many people love.

Focus On The Task At Hand

The tweaks that have been applied are very clever and intuitive. For example, if you tap a number onto the phone manually, you can easily save -t to contacts. And all the action buttons have been moved to bottom of the screen, making one-hand operation easier. That’s important as devices have become larger and being able to use devices with one hand has become increasingly difficult.

At Samsung’s developer event in San Francisco, Jee Won Lee, the company’s Senior Designer of UX Design, made a point of highlighting this challenge and how One UI would address it.

Although Samsung has already started showing One UI off, it hasn’t yet officially released it. We expect the new software to officially debut on the Galaxy S10 when it’s released early in 2019. With that said, the beta is currently available to anyone who has access to a mobile VPN (more on which below.)

[referenced url=”https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2018/12/samsung-galaxy-s10-leak-specs-price-and-release-date-revealed/” thumb=”https://www.lifehacker.com.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2018/11/S10-410×231.jpg” title=”New Samsung Galaxy S10 Leak Reveals Basically Everything” excerpt=”The Samsung Galaxy S10 leaks just keep coming – and this one could be the biggest of all. According to a report on out sister site Gizmodo, the S10 will reportedly launch on February 20 2019; one week before Mobile World Congress (MWC).

It will purportedly come with 1TB of storage, 5G network support and a fearsomely prohibitive price tag. Here are the details!”]

The updates to night mode and updates to notifications look pretty slick from what the video shows.

How To Access The One UI Beta

If you want to try out One UI through Samsung’s beta program, there is a challenge. It’s only available to participants in China, France, Germany, India, Poland, South Korea, Spain, UK, and USA. But if you can overcome that hurdle, you’ll need to download the app from Galaxy Apps, submit an application to the “One UI Beta Program Registration” program and update your software.

As with all beta programs, I strongly recommend backing up all your data and not running the software on a smartphone you depend on. Stuff can go wrong with betas and you don’t want to be in the position where you lose critical data.

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