This One UI 8.5 feature dramatically improves your Samsung phone's battery life, here's how

Samsung’s One UI 8.5 beta is still hot off the presses, but it’s already proving to be a substantial update. With redesigned Samsung apps, a brand new Quick Settings UI, and a whole lot more, One UI 8.5 has quite a lot to offer — especially if you’re concerned about your phone’s battery life.

We could all use more battery life, and One UI 8.5 aims to give you just that, thanks to its upgraded Power Saving feature. If you’re rocking the One UI 8.5 beta or simply looking forward to the full release in 2026, here’s how to use the improved Power Saving to extend your Samsung phone’s battery life.

How to use One UI 8.5’s upgraded Power Saving feature

To get started with the upgraded Power Saving feature in One UI 8.5, you’ll want to follow these steps to find it:

1. Open the Settings app.
2. Tap Battery.
3. Scroll down the page.
4. Tap Power saving.
5. Tap the toggle at the top of the page to turn Power Saving on.

Once Power Saving is enabled, you’ll see two modes to choose from. In One UI 8.0 and previous versions, Power Saving was just something you turned on, and that was it. But in One UI 8.5, Power Saving is now broken up into two flavors: Standard and Maximum.

Standard is the default choice, and it’s essentially how the old Power Saving worked. When enabled, all of the following will happen:

• Limit CPU speed to 70%
• Turn off always-on display
• Decrease brightness by 10%
• Set motion smoothness to Standard (60Hz)
• Turn on dark mode
• Set screen timeout to 30 seconds

These are all of the same things Power Saving changed in previous One UI versions, so all of this should be pretty familiar. You can view this full list by tapping the gear icon next to Standard, and you can also disable any of the settings you don’t want Power Saving to change.

Below the Standard mode is the new Maximum option. Maximum includes all of the changes mentioned above, in addition to limiting all background activity and notifications except for “essential apps” and any additional ones you choose.

You can see these apps by tapping the gear icon next to Maximum. Those “essential apps” include the Clock, Google Play Store, Google Wallet, Messages, Phone, and Settings. From there, you can scroll down to see all of your installed apps and enable any you want to run normally, even when Maximum Power Saving is active.

You probably won’t want to keep your phone on Maximum mode as your go-to power-saving mode, but for times when you’re really running low on battery and need to make it stretch as far as possible, it’s a welcome option. How much battery life you can squeeze out of Maximum mode depends on your usage, but on a Galaxy S25 with about 90% battery remaining, One UI estimates that Maximum will keep the phone going for two days and 18 hours.

As a reminder, this upgraded Power Saving experience is only available in the One UI 8.5 beta, which is currently live for the Galaxy S25, Galaxy S25 Plus, and Galaxy S25 Ultra. You can download the One UI 8.5 beta on those phones right now, or wait for the full One UI 8.5 release, which is expected sometime in early 2026.