Months later

Samsung: This is Why the Update to One UI 7 and Android 15 is So Late

After usually releasing One UI updates to old phones before the end of the year and allowing existing users to get the latest Android version, Samsung is significantly slower this year. Now it's explained why.

Erik Mörner

Published 13 February 2025 - 13:54

Samsung users have had to wait unusually long for the update to Android 15 and One UI 7. The explanation for this is the working method and that the goals for One UI 7 were different.

It is in an interview on Samsung's Indonesian website that one of Samsung's heads of research and development explains. Usually, development is done year by year, but with One UI 7, the development time has spanned several years because Samsung wanted the update to include significant changes from the ground up.

What Samsung wanted to achieve with One UI 7 was a deep integration with AI, and therefore Google was also involved in the work, so that both Google's and Samsung's own apps could fully benefit from the AI features. Google was therefore involved from the very beginning, and according to the interviewed head, this was 2-3 years before the launch.

We also learn that One UI 7, which has received a positive reception and which we at Mobil found to be a major improvement when we tested the S25 series, was preceded by extensive global market research and compiled user feedback, and that they wanted to update not only the design but the function from the ground up where software and hardware interact.

One UI 7 and Android 15 are delivered from the start in the new Samsung Galaxy S25 series, but Samsung has not yet announced when it might come to existing phones. Samsung is among the manufacturers that are most generous with updates to older phones, with the latest, for example, promised seven years of updates. However, among the new features in the updates, some depend on more modern hardware that is only available in the latest models, which means that the functionality may differ depending on which phone it concerns. Older phones simply do not get all the new features the S25 series has.