On 5th of December Samsung finally released their Beta Programme for OneUI 7, based on Android 15 for Galaxy S24/24+/24 Ultra. The program is open to participants in China, Germany, India, Poland, the Republic of Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
After a few tries where I was greeted with a message that the maximum number of participants has been reached I managed to get in. So if you receive the same message just try again later.
The update is 4.5 GB and it brings a redesigned control centre with notifications and quick settings being separated now and accesibile from different corners of the top side of the screen. My muscle memory doesn’t really like this change yet :)
And some redesigned icons for some system apps, which I’m not really a fan of. But maybe is just the first impression and the resistance to change and it will grow on me later eventually. The app drawer can be set to vertical scrolling now, but only if you choose alphabetical sorting, otherwise if you still want custom sorting you’re stuck with the old horizontal scrolling. The performance seems to be the same or even slightly better. But I would rather blame the Placebo effect for this. All apps seem to be working as expected, without any bugs or crashes. Even the bank apps and Google Wallet which usually don’t work on Beta software due to the lack of certification.
Overall I’m not really amazed by this update. Which is not a bad thing. In my opinion this is a sign of maturity for the mobile operating system. But I’m a little disappointed by not meeting the expectations that the tech press set up for it. As MKBHD says, expectations are the thief of joy
