Quick settings overhaul, floating pill buttons, and more leaked for Samsung's next phone update

One UI 8.5 is the next big update to Samsung’s Android skin. The beta program is expected to start next week, but leaks continue to emerge rapidly. Earlier this week, a leaked changelog provided a glimpse into what to expect in the upcoming update, and now a build for the Galaxy S24 Ultra has leaked, offering a firsthand look at some of these changes.

SamMobile has a build of One UI 8.5 running on a Galaxy S24 Ultra, and now we can see many of the changes we’ve been expecting, including redesigned apps, camera UI updates, and a revamped quick settings page. To highlight these changes, please refer to our before-and-after images below.

One of the most significant changes is found on the quick settings page. In One UI 7 and 8, you can reorder items like the volume and brightness sliders and add/remove toggles in the panel below Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, but that’s the only customization you can do.

In One UI 8.5, the brightness and volume sliders have been separated and can be resized and turned into vertical sliders instead of horizontal ones. Toggles can be added outside of the collapsible quick settings panel, and all your options are categorized, much like the Control Center in iOS.

Changes are also coming to Samsung’s first-party apps. The Device Care menu has been decluttered, with larger usage bars and smaller text.

The Settings app should be easier to navigate, with the search bar moved from an icon in the top right to a search bar at the bottom of the screen. Samsung has also removed all descriptive text from the settings categories, and although it looks cleaner, it may make it harder to find the desired menu without using the search function.

The Files app has had the six file categories at the top of the screen changed from a 2×3 list to a 1×5 horizontal list, with the downloads option moved further down as its own menu item. The search button in One UI 8 has been replaced with a floating search bar at the bottom of the screen.

Finally, the phone app has had the keypad, recents, and contacts buttons at the bottom of the screen moved into a floating pill to match the design language of the rest of the system.

The camera app has been tweaked, too. The settings screen has been reorganized, with commonly used options like video format and saving to external storage brought out of the “Advanced video options” sub-menu, making them easier to access quickly.

In the camera UI, the Pro video and photo modes feature a new button to the left of the lens selector that hides all UI elements except the capture button and lens switcher, reducing visual clutter when framing a shot.

Finally, we can see one of the lockscreen changes previously mentioned in the leaked changelog in action. When choosing a new lockscreen wallpaper, the phone will detect faces and pets and then rearrange your clock and widgets to make sure that the subject is visible.

One UI 8.5 is shaping up to be a significant update for Samsung phones, and hopefully, it won’t be long before the public beta starts and we can try it out for ourselves.