The One UI 8.5 beta turned my Samsung phone into an iPhone

It’s been a couple of days since Samsung launched its One UI 8.5 beta, and so far, it’s off to a solid start. My colleague Robert Triggs had almost nothing but good things to say in his One UI 8.5 beta hands-on, praising the update for its enhanced customization features and updated Samsung apps.

I’ve been using the One UI 8.5 beta on a Galaxy S25 since the update was released, and while I agree with all of Rob’s praise for the software, I can’t help but feel uneasy about it. Specifically, how much One UI 8.5 makes my Samsung phone feel like an iPhone.

Samsung has never shied away from taking “inspiration” from Apple, but it feels like the company has gone a step too far with One UI 8.5.

Using these new customization tools, it takes just a second to turn your Quick Settings panel into a copycat version of iOS’s Control Center — especially since you can now orient the brightness and volume sliders vertically. Combined with similar icon shapes and grab bars in the edit mode, it all just feels a little too familiar.

That feeling is even more prevalent in some of Samsung’s first-party applications— specifically the Clock, Gallery, and Phone apps. All of these are redesigned in One UI 8.5, with a new bottom navigation bar that looks like it was ripped straight from iOS 26. The floating bar design is functionally sound and doesn’t really change how you use any of these apps, but that almost makes it worse.

Samsung may not admit it, but it’s pretty evident that the only reason these apps have this new navigation bar is that the iPhone does. And it would be naive to think that more Samsung apps won’t adopt this new UI in the weeks/months ahead.

And the iOS 26 inspiration doesn’t end there. The search bar in the app drawer is now a smaller pill shape, akin to the iOS 26-like navigation bar in the apps mentioned above. The back arrow in the Settings app is now a floating circle, just like in iOS 26. Samsung even went so far as to add a glow effect to the Calculator app’s buttons, mimicking the Liquid Glass design of the iOS 26 Calculator app.

Do these iOS inspirations make One UI 8.5 a bad piece of software? Do they ruin what’s an otherwise solid update? No, and I don’t think anyone would suggest that.

However, it’s also true that Samsung going to such lengths to copy iOS 26 is a bad look. Samsung is far from the only Android OEM to tweak its software this year to be more iOS-like, but it stings a little more given Samsung’s size and scale, plus its abandonment of the original design elements that still existed in One UI.

One UI had a clear-cut design identity when it debuted in 2018, and while it stayed that way for a while, Samsung has chipped away at it here and there with updates over the years. One UI 8.5 feels like the largest dose of iOS-ification we’ve seen from Samsung at once, and it’s clear Samsung doesn’t intend to change this strategy anytime soon.

I use Android phones because I like using Android, not because I want to use an operating system that looks like an iOS knockoff. However, that’s precisely what Samsung, OnePlus, and so many other brands seem to think Android users want.

I’m looking forward to seeing how One UI 8.5 progresses through the beta and what the final version looks like when it releases in early 2026. I just wish the update felt like its own original piece of software, rather than yet another iOS 26 clone.