Samsung’s One UI 7 probably won’t arrive until next year — and that’s not good enough
Samsung’s One UI 7 will probably be delayed, and that is bad news for Galaxy smartphone owners.
Samsung recently rolled out its One UI 2 update. It brought with it an updated look and feel, as well as some major new features, including a redesigned Dark Mode, better notification controls, and more. But the company already started dropping hints that One UI 3 wouldn’t be coming for a while yet. Now, reports are surfacing that the software could launch as late as early 2022.
The reasoning? Samsung doesn’t want One UI 3 to compete with Android 11, at least not in the public’s eye. As far as most smartphone users are concerned, the two operating systems have no real relationship, but this is a more accurate portrayal from an internal perspective.
The main reason for this? Android 11 is not yet publicly available for most phone makers outside of Google’s Pixel family. While many other manufacturers are running betas for their custom Android-based operating systems, we haven’t seen the latest software iteration show up on a flagship smartphone that isn’t built by Google.
As far as Samsung is concerned, the latest Android operating system update (Android 11) might arrive right at the same time One UI 3 is about to be ready, putting both of them into direct competition for media attention.
The company doesn’t want to push out both software iterations at once. The thought process might seem silly for people on the outside. However, Google, OnePlus, Xiaomi and others all plan on implementing a significant UI refresh to Android 11 with their proprietary customization. They don’t want their own implementations to get overshadowed. Instead, the focus should be on their new software. With this reasoning, a one-year lag in One UI’s latest update would allow Google and Samsung to focus more heavily on promoting Android 11’s main benefits in order to avoid a clash.
Even if it’s a delay, One UI 3’s arrival date won’t be a terrible loss to users because Samsung already introduced several significant software changes in its latest update, One UI 2, back in October 2019.
With a delay that far out in the future, Samsung is doing users a favor by focusing attention on Google’s software updates rather than getting into a battle to draw eyes toward One UI 3 before the main competitor even hits the market. There’s a certain logic to waiting, though some Galaxy smartphone owners might feel impatient. In the long run, this approach makes sense and will hopefully lead to Samsung focusing all its efforts on making One UI 3 as impressive and groundbreaking as it wants it to be.
