One UI 7 should have been Samsung’s best update in years. Now, it’s the worst

Samsung has done something incredible with One UI 7. Easily Samsung’s biggest Android update in years, One UI 7 has ample new features and a much-needed fresh coat of paint across the board — making it the most enjoyable piece of Samsung software I’ve used in a long, long time.

Such a poorly handled update would have been frustrating regardless, but it stings all the more so considering that — messy release aside — One UI 7 is pretty damn great. But that messy release can’t be ignored. Ultimately, it takes what should have been Samsung’s best update in years and has turned it into one of the worst.

I’ve been using One UI 7 since late January, first on the baby Galaxy S25 and most recently on the Galaxy S25 Ultra. I haven’t been the biggest fan of One UI for the last several years, but having spent quality time with One UI 7, I’ve been thoroughly surprised and impressed with how much I’ve liked using it.

For one thing, some of the flagship features, like the Now Bar, are everything I hoped for. Although it is a shameless recreation of Live Activities on iOS, I can’t deny how useful the Now Bar has been. Seeing live sports scores automatically appear and update on the lock screen has been a treat, especially during the early days of March Madness last month. Seeing ongoing timers is tremendously helpful on laundry day, and having music playback controls appear there is great, too.

I’ve also been really happy with the new camera app. It’s surprisingly difficult to find a well-designed camera app in 2025 (just ask Apple), but I think Samsung did a great job with its new layout in One UI 7. It’s a simple touch, but moving controls like timer settings, exposure levels, and more to the bottom of the screen — and hiding them behind a nicely organized pop-up menu — has made the camera app much more enjoyable to interact with.

There are a lot of other headline features in One UI 7, such as updates to Writing Tools, new video recording options, and AI image generator tools like Drawing Assist. Those are well and good for people who care about them, but I’ve been more impressed with the smaller, day-to-day changes.

One such thing is the vertically scrolling app drawer. As silly as it may seem, Samsung’s old horizontal app drawer has long been one of my biggest annoyances with One UI. It’s not that it was bad on its own, but in a world where every other Android skin uses a vertically scrolling list, going back to a horizontal one whenever I used a Samsung phone was always aggravating. It didn’t add anything beneficial; it was just different for the sake of it.

That’s a thing of the past in One UI 7, and honestly, I couldn’t be happier. It’s incredible how such a simple change can make such a big difference, but it does. The vertical app drawer feels more natural, is easier to use, and removes a constant annoyance I used to have with Samsung’s software. In daily use, that adds up to be a pretty significant update.

And it’s not just the app drawer. I also love the new recent apps menu, which shows more apps at once and has a much more refined feel to it. Good animations are a hell of a thing, and Samsung nailed how smooth/fluid it feels to swipe through apps here. The option for large app folders on the home screen is great, too. I initially didn’t think I’d care for them, but they’ve quickly become a staple of my home screen (and something I’ve missed when using Google’s Pixel software).

Finally, I’m a big fan of One UI 7’s redesigned quick settings/notification panel. The split design has taken some time to get used to, but the more I interact with it, the more I’m coming around to it. And for those days when it just isn’t clicking, I like being able to switch back to the “old” design. More so than that, I think Samsung hit the nail on the head with its new quick settings UI. It’s clean, polished, and just as customizable as ever.

On their own, none of these things are all that significant. But when you add everything together — a better app drawer, improved folders, a nicer camera app, etc. — it creates an Android skin that I want to keep coming back to. That’s not something I’ve felt about One UI in years, and it’s a testament to just how good One UI 7 really is.

Unfortunately, as much as I like using One UI 7 day-to-day, I’m not sure how much that matters once you factor in the absolute cluster surrounding its release.

For the last few years, Samsung has been one of the better Android companies in the update game. Not only is its seven-year update policy among the best in the business, but Samsung has also gotten into a good rhythm of delivering updates promptly. For whatever reason, though, it’s struggled immensely to get One UI 7 into people’s hands.

It started with being late to start the One UI 7 beta. Then Samsung went weeks without any indication about where the final release was. And when One UI 7 finally started rolling out to devices, Samsung had to temporarily pause it to fix bugs it somehow didn’t squash in the six months between Android 15’s initial release and One UI 7’s public launch.

As much as I love using One UI 7, I hate everything surrounding it. While everyday users may not care or even be aware of this whole situation, people like you and me — Android enthusiasts — absolutely do. And to us, this is a difficult thing to bounce back from.

This could be a one-time fluke from Samsung, but what if it’s not? What if this is the new norm for Samsung updates from here on out? If One UI 7 is barely rolling out to users in April 2025 — and Android 16 is set to be released in June — why shouldn’t we believe that One UI 8 will be similarly behind schedule? How do we expect Samsung to get back on track?

Almost more so than the One UI 7 delay itself, Samsung has created a mountain of uncertainty around its updates going forward. It’s uncertainty the company miraculously overcame from over a decade ago, but in the span of just six months, it’s all piled up again.

No matter how you slice it, that’s a bad look for Samsung. Especially in a year when we should be celebrating everything Samsung got right with One UI 7, we’re left with the baggage Samsung keeps piling on top of it. It’s turned an exceptional update into an exhausting one, and that’s not good for anyone.