The dust has settled, and we had a decent amount of time to get around all the new things One UI 5.0 has to offer. It has come a long way since the first iteration of Samsung’s new OS chapter after Samsung Experience. It’s easily one of our favorite custom Android skins, and the latest version is a big step forward in many aspects.
The first thing we noticed is how smoother it feels compared to One UI 4.0.
Secondly, it’s evident that the developers’ team worked hard on bringing a slew of new features to the already feature-packed OS. While most other OEMs introduced modest changes to their new Android overlays, Samsung’s changelog is a bit hard to cover from top to bottom. There are new additions to pretty much every category – from visual changes all the way down to some under-the-hood improvements.
In fact, One UI 5.0 seems like a lot bigger update than Android 13 itself. This leads us to our first stop in our One UI 5.0 review.
Android 13
Core Android features are sometimes neglected by other manufacturers when they update their proprietary OS versions, but Samsung diligently implements them in its One UI. This year’s intrinsic Android 13 features are few, and most focus on the visual aspect of Android’s Material Design looks. And since those are not applicable to Samsung’s own take on how Android should look, this leaves us with privacy and notification-focused improvements.
Once you install an app and launch it for the first time, the system will ask whether you want the app to send you notifications or keep them disabled by default. Notification-related controls are now easier to access and will always appear on top of the system menu. A direct shortcut to the app’s internal notification settings can be found at the bottom of the notification panel. More granular control over what types of notifications apps can send – badges, floating notifications and notification cards on the Lock screen.
Separate language control for each app is also available, which makes us wonder why such а basic feature wasn’t available before.
Privacy-wise, Android 13 now deletes clipboard data after a while because malicious apps were often exploiting the clipboard as users oftentimes copy sensitive data like phone numbers, emails, credit card numbers and even passwords.
One UI 5.0
Visual changes
As we already said earlier, perhaps one of the biggest improvements is the overall performance of the OS. Ever since the ancient TouchWiz, Samsung’s software is infamous for its rather sluggish performance. And even though One UI is a lot better than its predecessors, it’s still lagging behind its rivals in this regard. Literally and figuratively speaking. One UI 5.0 aims to fix that, and it does so up to a certain degree. Samsung has optimized animations and transitions that are sensibly faster and smoother. Everything feels a tad more natural.
Nevertheless, we could think of many other Android iterations that offer smoother and faster experience, so Samsung still has some work to do.
Other visual changes include better contrast, new app icons and illustrations across the system menus so that it’s easier to recognize apps and read text.
Once again, the accent color palette is automatically generated based on your wallpaper, but this time around, the system gives you a wider choice of color combinations and that palette can also be applied to app icons.
Last but not least, the default dialer now picks animated backgrounds for each contact by default, so it’s kind of easier to see at a glance who’s calling. Unless, of course, you assign an AR emoji, a sticker or a photo of your choice.
New modes
Samsung is introducing so-called Routines. You can choose a mode based on what you are doing right now and execute certain actions, change sound profiles, display settings, notifications, etc. For instance, the driving Routines profile can be set up to turn on DnD mode and launch Spotify automatically, for example. You can even trigger certain Routines with actions of your choice, such as turning on the hotspot or airplane mode.
Source: gsmarena
