Paul Jones / Android Authority
One UI changed the game when it was released toward the end of 2018. Gone was the sluggish, bloated Android skin that Samsung users were used to up to that point. Aside from performance, One UI focused on one-handed use when it was released, which is how it earned its name.
But over seven years later, the focus on one-handed use feels like an afterthought, especially with the latest One UI 8.5 beta.
Do you wish One UI was easier to use one-handed? 14 votes Yes 79 % No 21 % I don't use One UI 0 %
What made One UI different?
One UI 1.0 settings app One UI 1.0 phone app
We’re so used to One UI now that it can be hard to remember what made it so different in the first place. The big thing One UI did was what I would describe as over-scrolling.
Open a Samsung app, like Settings, and scroll to the top. You can pull the top items in the list of menus down towards the middle of the screen, something older versions of Samsung’s software, and indeed modern Android skins that compete with One UI, lack. One UI also moved many of the menus and buttons that once lived at the top of the screen to the bottom, within reach of your thumb. You can see examples of this in the screenshots above, which are from the One UI beta for the Galaxy S9.
The work Samsung put into one-handed has paid off. Phones were already big when One UI launched, and they’ve only gotten bigger since then. As good as One UI is, there were still UI elements that were hard to reach. It’s as if Samsung got 95% of the way there and then stopped. We’re on the 8th major release of One UI now, and while it hasn’t gotten any worse, it hasn’t gotten any better, either.
One UI 8.5, which is currently in beta, makes some small changes, but not enough.
... continue reading