Samsung Galaxy S25 could get One UI 8.0 sooner than you think

Samsung Galaxy S24 owners don’t need to be reminded of the slow rollout of One UI 7, the Android 15-based OS update. By the time it finally arrives on April 7, it will be a massive 174 days after Android 15 debuted on Google’s Pixel 8 — an unwelcome throwback to the bad old days of Samsung mobile software updates.

The good news is that it sounds like this won’t be the new normal for the company. On X, the leaker Tarun Vats has spotted a Geekbench listing for the Galaxy S25 running a version of One UI 8, based on the upcoming Android 16.

While Geekbench listings can be spoofed, Vats seems confident this is legitimate. When asked about its legitimacy, he simply replied: “Do you think I will post a fake one? I double-check it before posting any Geekbench post.”

The scores of 3,135 in single-core and 9,938 in multi-core are pretty similar to what we recorded in our Samsung Galaxy S25 review (2,916 and 9,886), which is encouraging as One UI 8 naturally has plenty of optimization to come.

In contrast to this March 25 test, Samsung reportedly began testing One UI 7 on the Galaxy S24 in May 2024, so it’s reassuring to see that thing appear to be moving faster with One UI 8.

That said, the two aren’t necessarily comparable. While Google has typically released new versions of its operating system alongside its flagship Pixel phones in the Fall, there’s been some talk of Android 16 arriving earlier this year, with a June release tipped. With that possible release window in mind, Samsung testing One UI 8 this early doesn’t seem quite so surprising.

That could also raise concerns that the One UI 8 rollout will drag just as much as One UI 7, especially on older handsets. Possibly, but according to Samsung, One UI 7 has been a particularly challenging update, which required longer-term planning than usual.

“For this version, we wanted to make a big breakthrough, which required careful planning since two to three years before the project started,” a Samsung representative explained in a machine-translated interview with its Indonesian site last month. “We wanted to create something more impactful, and this longer preparation time allowed us to make significant improvements.”

It’s unlikely that the move to One UI 8 will be quite such a dramatic change, so hopefully, the rollout shouldn’t be that far behind Google’s own.

Of course, the first phones to benefit from One UI 8 might not have yet been released yet. The Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Galaxy Z Flip 7 are expected in the summer, a month or two after Android 16’s rumored release date, and it would make sense for Samsung to prioritize the new hardware over older handsets.