Samsung is known for rolling out their Android updates at a snail’s pace and is often one of the last manufactures to seed the latest Android update. Nonetheless, the company usually includes a bunch of improvements with their updates and the official update is almost always free from any major bugs.
Late last year the South Korean giant announced their One UI skin over Android 9 Pie which is one of the biggest UI changes Samsung has brought along over the past few years.
One UI comes with a whole bunch of changes and improvements to the UI and it brings along some new features as well such as the Full-Screen Gestures and the ability system-wide dark mode feature we’ve all been waiting for.
That being said, One UI is far from perfect. While the update does have some cool tweaks and has a coat of fresh paint the update is honestly half baked and it seems Samsung released the update just for the sake of it.
In case you’re wondering why we think the latest update from Samsung isn’t up to the mark, then let us explain.
Why Samsung’s One UI is half baked?
There are a bunch of issues with One UI that isn’t only affecting users who are on the beta version of One UI. Several issues aren’t yet fixed and there are unnecessary changes which have been made which are a step back from Experience UI 9.5.
Let’s take a look at a few things which make the new update feel like a step in the wrong direction.
Broken Samsung Pay
Samsung Pay is easily one of the best smartphone payment apps and worked flawlessly up until now. After installing the latest One UI update, Samsung Pay does not seem to work for several users alike.
The app often crashes and payments don’t ever seem to go through. To add to the confusion, resetting the device also does not seem to fix the issue for a few users.
We do hope to see Samsung address the issue soon since Samsung Pay is used by several folks. However, it’s worth noting that the feature isn’t completely broken and is only affecting certain users.
Pro video mode removed
The pro mode for video recording was sneakily removed and unless you used the pro video mode before the Pie update, you might not notice this or it simply may not affect you at all.
However, for those of you who love recording videos on your Samsung smartphone especially because of the pro mode in the camera application, updating your device to Android Pie would be a huge disappointment since there isn’t any pro mode for video recording anymore.
There’s not a single good reason to justify removing the pro mode for video with the One UI update since the feature was fairly useful and there aren’t many professional video recording apps on the Play Store which give you the same features.
Now here’s something that we still can’t get over. Samsung has now removed the option to hide the navigation bar when not in use. Previously with Experience UI, users could simply double tap the small dot on the navigation bar to hide it when not in use.
The feature was super convenient and helped free up the navigation bar area so that apps could take up the entire screen. Well, with the new One UI update, users can no longer hide the navigation bar.
There are already several forums dedicated to One UI issues and most users are disappointed with the removal of the option to hide the navigation bar when not in use.
Our best guess is that Samsung wants users to try out the new Full-Screen Gestures feature which is why they removed the option to hide the navigation bar; however, this shouldn’t have been the case.
Unpolished Full-Screen Gestures
The Full-Screen Gestures on One UI are now where as good as what you’d find on the latest iPhones, though, that could be said for all Android devices. However, the Full-Screen gestures on One UI are just lacking some polish and a few features such as the ability to quickly switch between recently opened apps.
Huawei, OnePlus, and Xiaomi all have a slightly better implementation of the Gesture Navigation feature, however, we have to admit the One UI Full-Screen Gestures are in fact better than the ‘Gesture Navigation’ on Stock Android Pie.
Third-party navigation gesture apps such as Fluid Navigation Gestures do a way better job than the One UI Full-Screen Gestures which just goes to show Samsung probably released the update in a scurry.
In conclusion, the One UI update is fairly good and does bring a decent amount of improvements which were much needed such as the UI overhaul which honestly looks far better than what Experience UI 9.5 had to offer.
However, apart from the UI changes and the night mode implementation, it seems Samsung has taken a step back when it comes to the features offered since useful features have now been removed from One UI. With the One UI update on the S8 and Note 8 devices, Samsung has now also blocked the ability to use custom overlays.
We do hope to see Samsung bring some of these features back in future updates; however, the chances of that happening are super thin and we wouldn’t be willing to bet on it.
Nonetheless, users would simply have to make do with the features available on One UI and see what Samsung has to offer with the Android Q update later this year.
What are your thoughts on One UI? Let us know in the comments below.
