The launch of Samsung's One UI in 2018 was undeniably a watershed moment for phone user interfaces. While the initial iPhone had shortcomings, it was clear that it had won the hearts and minds of the globe when everyone from OnePlus to Google copied much of its design. We've been fans since the beginning, but ...
The launch of Samsung’s One UI in 2018 was undeniably a watershed moment for phone user interfaces. While the initial iPhone had shortcomings, it was clear that it had won the hearts and minds of the globe when everyone from OnePlus to Google copied much of its design. We’ve been fans since the beginning, but there’s one area where it’s always been difficult to look at, and that’s animations.
Samsung’s One UI is a mix of openness and closeness. Things are continually speeding, flowing, expanding, and contracting to an extreme degree. In fact, the animation bloat was so awful that Samsung included a feature named “Reduce Animations” at one time, almost as if they realized it was excessive.
It’s difficult to quantify how much that feature lowered everything, but we always advised you to enable it. Then Samsung took it down one day! If you wish to lessen animations, you must first activate developer options and alter the phone’s animation scales. That’s not tough, but we don’t like the fact that Samsung removed our earlier straightforward option.
Anyway, SamMobile believes that Samsung is set to dramatically increase the UI speed in One UI 5.0, which is positive and relevant news. One of the primary issues on the One UI 5 agenda, according to their sources, will be to improve UI navigation speeds and animations so that they are smoother.
We don’t have an official debut date for One UI 5, however Samsung usually releases new One UI updates alongside the latest Android version. For example, we were able to test One UI 4 with Android 12 before it was rolled out to all of Samsung’s finest phones by the end of 2021. If Samsung holds another developer conference in the fall, it could be a nice opportunity to preview the new One UI.
Finally, while we have someone in Samsung’s orbit’s attention, can we get a vertical app drawer already? For us, Samsung, it’s long past time to make the switch.
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Robert Haba is the founder and editor-in-chief of Droid Tools. A lifelong gadget enthusiast with over a decade following the Android ecosystem, he built this publication to cut through the noise and give readers honest, real-world coverage of the tech they actually use.
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