00:00 – Mishaal Rahman: The floodgates have opened for One UI 8.5 leaks, giving us an early glimpse of the software features that will arrive on the Samsung Galaxy S26.
00:08 – C. Scott Brown: And Google is finally working on its own version of Apple’s Handoff feature for Android phones.
00:14 – Mishaal Rahman: I’m Mishaal Rahman.
00:15 – C. Scott Brown: And I’m C. Scott Brown, and this is the Authority Insights Podcast, where we break down the latest news and leaks surrounding the Android operating system.
00:23 – Mishaal Rahman: So, we’ve seen One UI leaks in the past, but never on this scale. It seems like an entire build of one UI 8.5 has leaked. It’s publicly available now. A lot of people have gotten their hands on it, giving us a hint at a bunch of upcoming features, design changes, and more. You know, like who knows exactly how many of these new features we spotted in the wild will actually be debuting or exclusive to the Galaxy S26, but it’s still an exciting time for Samsung device fans.
00:52 – C. Scott Brown: Yeah, and we’re also excited to see Google finally work on its own version of Handoff for Android devices. Apple’s Handoff is one of the main reasons why people get locked into the Apple ecosystem or the walled garden if you want to call it that. Apple users really love their ability to, you know, hand off files and features and other things from device to device. So having something like this in the Android world is something that I think a lot of people would really love. So really excited about that. And another thing that Apple users really love is the new hypertension alert system in the Apple Watch. Fortunately, that won’t be exclusive to Apple Watches for very long. So we have some news to tell you about that. So get excited about that one, too.
01:36 – Mishaal Rahman: Yeah, but before we dive into the, you know, the Handoff news and hypertension news, I just want to circle back to the One UI 8.5 stuff, because that is absolutely massive. There’s just so much has happened in the past few weeks in terms of One UI 8.5 leaks. Like we’ve gotten I don’t know how it’s happened, but an entire build of One UI 8.5 is out in the wild and people have gotten it installed on their devices. They have been digging through the APKs, including our very own AssembleDebug. We found so many new features that are coming up. So, very briefly, like I’m going to, we’re going to go through a bunch of the features that have been discovered in these One UI 8.5 leaks. Like we’re not going to actually like go over every single one in great detail because it’s just so much, but just to highlight a couple of the major new features. So, the first one I want to talk about is a feature called Private Display. So, this feature is supposedly going to make it more difficult for people who are standing around you to peek on your screen, to actually see what you’re looking at. So, supposedly you’ll be able to limit the visibility from side angles and so only you can see what’s on your display. Now, you’re probably familiar, there are screen protectors that claim to do this that like actually limit the angles that you can see. But of course, those are things you have to buy. They’re add-ons for your device. They don’t come natively on your phone. And of course, they affect actually like the reproduction of the screen. So like your screen is not going to look as good as it did at all angles, especially even when you’re viewing directly on. But, you know, if maybe this works out, if Samsung is able to implement this in a way that makes it so it doesn’t really affect your viewing experience while still kind of limiting the visibility of everyone else’s, that would be huge. And supposedly, this will be using a new Samsung Flex Magic panel technology, which is going to be debuting on the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra according to some leaks. So this tech supposedly uses artificial intelligence to control viewing angles. I have no idea exactly how, but supposedly it’ll be adjusting pixels so they’re not as visible to people who are sitting next to you. And according to the teardown that we did on One UI 8.5, there will be an option to choose the privacy level. You’ll have a maximum privacy level that dims the screen even further, and then you’ll have basically a standard level that will just give you some basic protections. So, Scott, what do you think of this feature? Like, do you think this is actually going to be genuinely useful? Are you like excited for it? Do you think it’s going to be detrimental to the viewing experience? What are your thoughts?
04:13 – C. Scott Brown: This is definitely a I’ll believe it when I see it kind of thing. Like this sounds really cool, but I don’t know, AI to dim pixels and to do different things. It just sounds very far-fetched to me. That being said, if it works, it would be really cool because I mean, I don’t personally use one of those screen protectors that sort of limits the viewing angles for people around you. I don’t use those myself, but I do see a lot of people using them. I travel a lot, so I’m on a lot of planes, a lot of trains, and yeah, I see them used all the time. So clearly there’s a market for, you know, this privacy thing. And if someone could get that without having to buy a screen protector, maintain that screen protector, replace that screen protector periodically throughout the life of the phone. If they could just get it out of the box automatically, that would be amazing. So I am all for this feature, but it sounds really unrealistic. Like it sounds it sounds like magic. Like it just doesn’t it doesn’t seem real. So, yeah, I’ll believe it when I see it. But if it does work, then yeah, I can see this being the next Gorilla Glass Armor. Like the next thing that Samsung Galaxy S Ultra phones have that every other Android phone user wishes they had because you know, the Gorilla Glass Armor – that anti-reflective coating on top of the Galaxy S Ultra phones – is really, really good and everybody I wish I had that on my phone. So it’s like I feel like that’s one thing that everybody wants. So I think this could be the next thing for that. But I’ll believe it when I see it.
05:51 – Mishaal Rahman: Yeah, like I just don’t see how this could be done without some kind of new display layer. And just given what we’ve seen of existing commercial solutions, I struggle to see how it could be done without impacting the display quality at all. Like if Samsung is able to pull this off and the S26 Ultra’s display still looks as amazing as the S25’s or even better, that would be amazing. Like they’re able to add this without any compromises. That would be a really good thing to see. But you know, we’ll have to actually wait and see probably until January when they usually launch the S26 series, that’s when we’ll find out and actually get on our hands.
06:26 – C. Scott Brown: Yeah, January, February, yeah, somewhere in there. It’s the AI. The AI is the thing that’s sort of the thing.
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