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One UI 8 beta arrives for Samsung Galaxy S24, Z Fold 6, and Z Flip 6 in select regions
One UI 8 beta arrives for Samsung Galaxy S24, Z Fold 6, and Z Flip 6 in select regions

Phone Arena

time2 days ago

  • Phone Arena

One UI 8 beta arrives for Samsung Galaxy S24, Z Fold 6, and Z Flip 6 in select regions

As promised by Samsung, new reports indicate that Galaxy S24 , S24+, and S24 Ultra owners in the UK and South Korea can now sign up through the Samsung Members app. After enrolling, they can download the update, which is about 3.2 GB in size and includes the August 1 security patch. The beta build number varies by region. In South Korea, the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Z Flip 6 are also part of the rollout. Users in the US and India are expected to gain access soon. Joining the beta requires opening the Samsung Members app, logging in, and looking for the One UI 8 beta banner. After registering, the update will appear in the Software update section. Samsung plans to expand beta access in September to other models, such as the Galaxy S23 series and Galaxy Z Fold 5. The first stable releases are also scheduled to begin rolling out next month. One UI 8 debuted with the Galaxy S25 series earlier this year, introducing a number of visual and functional changes over One UI 7. The interface brings a refreshed design language with updated icons, smoother animations, and more consistent spacing across menus. Performance improvements are also part of the package, with better app launch speeds and more efficient background processing. AI integration has been expanded, including smarter text extraction from images, improved voice commands, and enhanced photo editing suggestions within the Gallery app. Samsung has also refined multitasking on large-screen devices like the Galaxy Z Fold 6 . On the security side, One UI 8 adds stronger app permission controls and new privacy indicators that make it easier to see when the camera or microphone is in use. Battery optimization has also been improved, with adaptive charging features designed to extend battery health over time. That said, beta versions can have bugs, performance issues, or compatibility problems. Users who depend on their devices for daily reliability may want to wait for the stable release. However, for those who enjoy testing new features and do not mind occasional glitches, One UI 8 offers an early preview of Samsung's software direction for 2025 — just proceed with caution.

Samsung One UI 8 Beta Will Be Open for More Galaxy Devices
Samsung One UI 8 Beta Will Be Open for More Galaxy Devices

Syyaha

time6 days ago

  • Syyaha

Samsung One UI 8 Beta Will Be Open for More Galaxy Devices

Samsung Electronics today announced the expansion of its ongoing One UI 8 beta program to additional Galaxy devices. The update sets the foundation for advanced multimodal capabilities to more Galaxy devices across various form factors, along with more intuitive Galaxy AI experiences that simplify everyday routines. Initially introduced with the Galaxy S25 series in May, the One UI 8 beta program will include the Galaxy S24 series, Galaxy Z Fold6 and Galaxy Z Flip6 beginning next week in Korea, the U.S., the U.K. and India. In September, availability will extend to even more devices, including the Galaxy S23 series, Z Fold5, Z Flip5, A36 5G, A55 5G, A35 5G and A54.1 Users can register for the beta program via the Samsung Members app. One UI 8 delivers smarter, more convenient AI experiences through multimodal capabilities that understands users' real-time context and supports more natural interactions. When paired with the Galaxy Buds3 or Buds3 Pro, users can activate Google's Gemini with voice or by long-pressing either earbud. Designed to complement Galaxy's diverse form factors, One UI 8 enhances productivity and efficiency while offering personalized, proactive suggestions tailored to each user. In September, Samsung will roll out the official version of One UI 8, incorporating valuable feedback from beta program participants. The update will begin with the Galaxy S25 series and will be rolled out sequentially to other eligible devices. In addition, One UI 8 Watch will expand to more Galaxy Watch models beyond the Galaxy Watch8 series later this year, delivering motivational health features and a more refined, intuitive smartwatch interface to a wider range of users.

Your Galaxy flagship may now be eligible for exclusive access to One UI 8: here's who can join
Your Galaxy flagship may now be eligible for exclusive access to One UI 8: here's who can join

Phone Arena

time08-08-2025

  • Phone Arena

Your Galaxy flagship may now be eligible for exclusive access to One UI 8: here's who can join

Samsung has today announced that starting next week – that's August 11 – the beta program for One UI 8, based on Android 16, will roll out to older devices in select happen to live in the US, South Korea, the UK or India, and you have a phone of the following: Galaxy S24 series Galaxy Z Fold 6 Galaxy Z Flip 6 … you can safely expect One UI 8 beta to arrive on your device starting Monday. Then, in September, those who own a device (or two) from this list:… will also get it. While beta programs aren't ideal for casual users, tech-savvy individuals can join through the Samsung Members app. Image by Samsung Samsung says the stable One UI 8 release will be rolled out in September, after enough feedback data is gathered from those who opted for the beta program. So, if you're in the beta, test thoroughly and then report whatever issues you may come across – that's how you're actively making One UI 8 better for everyone out course, the One UI 8 stable will first be disseminated to the Galaxy S25 family, and only then to eligible devices. What's more, One UI 8 Watch – the new OS for Samsung smartwatches – is going to be rolled out to eligible models besides the Galaxy Watch 8 series. Health features are coming, so stay tuned! Image by Samsung Based on Android 16 , One UI 8 is Samsung's latest software update for Galaxy devices with a strong focus on AI, personalization and usability. One UI 8 debuted on the brand-new Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Galaxy Z Flip 7 (unveiled on July 9) and it is among the first user interfaces (UI) to adopt Android 16 . At the heart of One UI 8 is a new multimodal AI system that enables more natural, context-aware interactions. It can understand what you're doing on the go and offer tailored suggestions to improve daily tasks. The interface is optimized for different device types – from slab phones to foldables, which is really cool. One UI 8 also introduces new tools like the Now Bar and Now Brief, which deliver AI-powered updates and suggestions. Enhanced privacy is a key focus, with Samsung Knox Vault securing user data and giving users the option to process data on-device instead of in the cloud. Beyond AI, One UI 8 includes several usability upgrades. Auracast support allows simple wireless audio sharing via QR code, making it easier to connect devices like Galaxy Buds and hearing aids. Device servicing is also improved with QR- and NFC-enabled customer support for faster check-ins at repair Reminder app now offers improved voice support and easier list sharing, while Quick Share lets users send files with a single tap from the Quick Settings panel. Samsung appears focused on delivering a more streamlined rollout with One UI 8 . The previous One UI 7 release faced a staggered timeline. Although it was expected to arrive soon after Android 15's debut in fall 2024, the beta began in December for the Galaxy S24 series. The stable version launched with the Galaxy S25 in January, but wider availability followed in April. Many users are now watching closely as One UI 8 begins its gradual release.

Is the Galaxy Z Fold 7 worth it? Samsung's latest foldable reviewed
Is the Galaxy Z Fold 7 worth it? Samsung's latest foldable reviewed

CNA

time08-08-2025

  • CNA

Is the Galaxy Z Fold 7 worth it? Samsung's latest foldable reviewed

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 is the best Samsung Fold device – and it needs to be as it's been launched into a much more competitive foldable landscape than its predecessor. The Galaxy Z Fold 7 features larger displays, improved build quality, upgraded main camera and is significantly thinner than its predecessor. So, is this enough to keep it competitive against rivals from China? We'll explore its design, build quality, AI and camera capabilities, performance and battery life. Whether you're shopping for the best foldable phone in Singapore or just curious about the Galaxy Z Fold 7's capabilities, this review has you covered. DESIGN: THIN IT TO WIN IT Like a nerd-bragging contest, smartphone manufacturers have gone to great lengths to claim the thin-and-light phone crown. The current kerfuffle over who truly makes the thinnest foldable illustrates how high the stakes are. Practically speaking, most consumers would be hard-pressed to tell if one device is a fraction of a millimetre thinner or weighs a few grammes less than another. Many of the 2025 crop of foldables are thin and light and the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is no exception. Excluding the camera bump, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is 8.9mm thick when folded – 3.2mm thinner than its predecessor, the Galaxy Z Fold 6. It feels like a conventional slab phone when folded. I carried it in the front pocket of my Dad jeans throughout the day and barely noticed it. The Galaxy Z Fold 7's camera bump sits in a slim module in the top-left corner of the case. Its location means the phone wobbles a lot when placed on a flat surface, unless you're willing to risk resting it on its outer display. The main case (excluding volume and side keys, SIM tray or camera lens barrel) is made from what Samsung calls Armor Aluminum. While the case is slim, it feels rigid and solidly built in use. That build quality extends to the hinge. It feels durable and tight but is also difficult to open. AI FEATURES The Galaxy Z Fold 7 features the full Galaxy AI suite of features. This includes stalwarts like circle to search, live translation and object erase. Two tools I found most useful were the Audio Eraser and Drawing Assist. The former did a good job of minimising traffic noise and background conversations in my test clips. Drawing Assist converted my very basic, extremely non-artistic sketches in the Notes app into nice 3D renderings and illustrations. DISPLAY Displays are a foldable device's bread and butter. The Galaxy Z Fold 7 uses 8-inch inner and 6.5-inch cover screens that support HDR10+ and have a 120Hz refresh rate. Both panels offers deep blacks and rich, vibrant colours and supports HDR10+. This makes it outstanding for viewing video content on supported apps like Prime Video and YouTube. While it no longer has S Pen support, the inner screen is great for multitasking, viewing maps, gaming, reading e-books, drawing and editing photos and videos. The crease on the inner screen is only slightly noticeable. On my sample, the screen retained a very slight fold when first opened but would open completely flat once slight pressure was applied. CAMERAS The Galaxy Z Fold 7's main camera has received a major upgrade – the same 200MP main sensor from the Galaxy S25 Ultra. It's a capable sensor that captures good images, even in low light, without looking over processed. Its telephoto and ultra-wide cameras aren't the sharpest but can capture good images in good light. The digital zoom (which goes up to 30X magnification) is usable up to 10X magnification. Beyond that, images look very soft, even when taken in good lighting with AI remastering. While the selfie camera captured decent images, I preferred using the cover screen to take selfies with the main lens. PERFORMANCE The Samsung Z fold 7 uses the Snapdragon's flagship 8 Elite chipset with a 120Hz screen. In daily use, it feels fast and responsive. Samsung's One UI 8 OS handles editing images, watching videos, scrolling socials and browsing smoothly – even with seven or eight apps open in the background. Gaming performance is good. Call of Duty played smoothly, even at high graphics settings. BATTERY PERFORMANCE For my use case, the Galaxy Z Fold 7's 4,400mAh lithium-ion battery offered an entire day of use. After one day of use, I had about 15 per cent of battery life remaining. This included about five hours of surfing, sketching, editing photos, streaming music and watching videos. Still, that is some way behind some of its rivals from China who've opted for silicon-carbon batteries that offer greater energy density. For instance, the Oppo Find N5 features a 5,600 mAh battery, the Honor Magic V5 has a 5,820 mAh battery and the recently announced Vivo X Fold5 packs a 6,000 mAh battery. For now, Samsung, Apple and Google are sticking with tried and tested lithium-ion batteries, focusing instead on improving energy efficiency. The Galaxy Z Fold 7 supports 25W wired and 15W wireless charging – extremely slow by today's standards. It took about 1 hour and 24 minutes to be fully charged from 0 per cent. WHAT ARE SILICON-CARBON BATTERIES? Silicon-carbon batteries pack more energy than lithium-ion ones. This means they can store more energy in the same space, or the same energy in a smaller space. They also support faster charging speeds. It's not all sunshine and roses though – the jury's still out over the long-term durability of silicon-carbon batteries.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 vs. Galaxy Z Fold6
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 vs. Galaxy Z Fold6

GSM Arena

time06-08-2025

  • GSM Arena

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 vs. Galaxy Z Fold6

Ro, 06 August 2025 It's either time for an upgrade or it's about time to try out the foldable life in general. Either way, this year's Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 looks like a promising next step, but the steep price tag might make you think twice and consider the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold6 instead. The new Z Fold7 is a few hundred bucks more expensive in some regions, which is a substantial amount. Yet, it's the biggest generational upgrade that the Z Fold lineup has had in recent years. It offers a more refined, lightweight and compact design, better performance, larger screens and an upgraded camera setup. On the other hand, the Z Fold6 is quite cheaper (in most markets) and the fact that Samsung is offering extended software support that keeps its devices relevant for years helps its case as well. It also has the benefit of offering S Pen support, which Samsung has decided to omit on the new model. It will be a heated fight in the arena between these two, so let's get on with it. Table of Contents: Design Display Battery Life Charging Speaker Test Performance Cameras Verdict For starters, you can compare the complete specs sheets or directly continue with our editor's assessment in the following text. Size comparison Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 Samsung Galaxy Z Fold6 One of the most significant upgrades with this year's Galaxy Z Fold7 is the more refined design. It's now on par with the competition in terms of weight and portability, which in turn means it's a substantial upgrade over the Z Fold6. The newer Fold is about 24 grams lighter than its predecessor and is 3.2mm thinner. That may not sound much, but the difference in the real world is night and day. The Z Fold7 now weighs and is just as thin as some flagships with a conventional form factor. It feels like a totally different phone compared to the Z Fold6. On the other hand, last year's Z Fold is narrower and shorter, but with smaller inner and outer screens. Display comparison Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 Samsung Galaxy Z Fold6 We already touched upon display size in the previous section. The only real-world difference between the two foldables is the screen diagonal and aspect ratio. The newer Z Fold offers considerably bigger inner screen and a slightly larger outer one. Additionally, the aspect ratio on the outer screen looks more natural as it's closer to a standard smartphone. We also found a small difference in the brightness. It turns out that the Galaxy Z Fold6's both displays are roughly 200 nits brighter (~1,400 nits vs. 1,600 nits), but you shouldn't make any decisions based on this metric alone. The 200 nits gap is negligible in the real world, as the Z Fold7's 1,400 nits are perfectly fine even outside on a bright sunny day. It's also important to note that the Galaxy Z Fold7 no longer supports S Pen input, unlike the Z Fold6, where you could get a case that holsters a stylus so you always have it handy. Battery life Despite the thinner chassis, the Galaxy Z Fold7 retains the 4,400 mAh battery from its predecessor. However, the change in the screen diagonal and chipset has resulted in slightly different battery endurance in some of our testing scenarios. Likely due to the larger screens, the Z Fold7 scores worse in the web browsing test, but considerably better in the 4G call and gaming scenarios, probably owing to the more efficient chipset. All in all, the difference in the overall Active Use Score is rather negligible and you are unlikely to see a noticeable real-world difference between the two. Charging speed Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 4400 mAh Samsung Galaxy Z Fold6 4400 mAh Both handsets support up to 25W fast charging using Samsung's PPS-enabled Power Delivery chargers, and given the identical batteries, it's no surprise that there's no difference in the charging times. Both devices can charge from 0 to 100% in less than an hour and a half. Speaker test The Galaxy Z Fold7 speakers feel like a downgrade over the previous generation. They are quieter, likely due to the smaller speaker cavity, and also sound flatter. We like the Z Fold6's more pronounced mids and clear vocals too. Performance As is usually the case, the newest Galaxy phone sports the newest flagship chipset on the market, so it's no surprise to see the Galaxy Z Fold7 featuring a more powerful SoC than its predecessor. But this time around, the performance difference is quite significant. The generational leap from the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 to the Snapdragon 8 Elite is not trivial. The latter offers considerably higher performance and better efficiency. Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 Samsung Galaxy Z Fold6 There's hardly any change in the memory department, though. Both devices offer the same base storage and memory. However, the 1TB Z Fold7 version sports 16GB of RAM, as opposed to the 1TB/12GB top Z Fold6 configuration. Benchmark performance As expected, the Z Fold7 shows superior performance over the Z Fold6. The newer foldable outperforms the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3-powered Z Fold6 by 34% in pure CPU benchmark tests and by 33% in GPU-heavy workloads. As for the combined AnTuTu test, it shows about a 29% difference. As we said, the performance gap is not trivial. Camera comparison The new Galaxy Z Fold7 replaces the older 50MP main sensor with a bigger 200MP one with much better capabilities. The Z Fold7 now uses the same main camera as the Galaxy S25 Ultra. Going by some previous comparison we've done in the past, we don't expect a big difference in image quality when comparing photos from the two devices' main cameras despite what the sensor resolution might suggest. The thing is, the output of these sensors is binned down to 12MP with both phones so it would be hard to track down any noticeable change in resolved detail. Noise, on the other hand, could be better on the photos by the higher-res sensor, and dynamic range potentially too. The Z Fold7 replaces the 4MP under-display selfie cam on the inside with a much better 10MP punch-hole one. It's the same sensor used on the outer screen punch-hole camera, but with an ultrawide lens. This allows you to fit more into the frame. Another difference brought about by the new model is that the ultrawide camera has gained autofocus capabilities, allowing sharp close-up macro stills. The rest of the camera hardware remains the same between the two phones - a 10MP 3x telephoto camera and a 10MP outer screen selfie. The camera samples below have been taken a year apart, at the time when the two corresponding reviews were prepared. Image quality As expected, there is hardly any difference between the two main cameras. If we had to pick one, it's surprisingly the Fold 6's photos that appear sharper, though not consistently so in every shot. Z Fold7 vs. Z Fold6: 0.6x • 1x The 3x zoom camera on the Z Fold 7 has slightly better definition and better contrast. Z Fold7 vs. Z Fold6: 2x • 3x In low-light scenarios, the Z Fold 7's 200MP main camera consistently produces photos with smoother presentation of the highlights, but that's about it. There is no benefit in noise because the Z Fold's shots are already clean as they are. After dark, the 3x zoom camera has a much cleaner output without any noise. At night, the Z Fold7's ultrawide is not as sharp but it's much cleaner with absolutely no noise which is a bit of a glaring issue with the Fold 6's ultrawide so we'd take the Fold7's any day. Z Fold7 vs. Z Fold6: Z Fold7 0.6x • 1x • 2x • 3x The internal selfie camera has seen a significant quality boost, bringing more detail, better sharpness and wider dynamic range compared to the 4MP under-display unit on the Z Fold6. Inner cam selfies: Z Fold7 • Z Fold6 Video quality During the day, the two phones produce similar 4K video quality out of its main camera. The two devices seem to produce comparable videos at night as well. 4K video screengrabs: 0.6x • 1x • 2x • 3x The rest of the cameras produce near-identical videos, which was to be expected. 4K video screengrabs: 0.6x • 1x • 3x Verdict If you reside in the US, going for the Galaxy Z Fold7 is a no-brainer, considering the negligible $100 price gap between the two. The Z Fold7 offers a more refined, lightweight design, larger screens with nicer aspect ratios, a more powerful chipset and a more refined camera experience. The slightly downgraded speakers aren't enough to tip the scales in the Fold6's favor. Unless you are dead-set on having an S Pen, in which case the Z Fold6 is your only choice. In Europe and other markets, the price difference is hard to ignore. The price difference ranges anything between €500 and €600, which would make you think twice before buying the newer model. Sure, the improvements are aplenty, but even if you don't care about the omitted stylus, it depends on how important raw performance, design and camera experience are to you. The larger screens with nicer aspect ratios. The thinner and lighter design. The considerably more powerful chipset. The small camera improvements. 256GB 12GB RAM £ 1,799.00 £ 1,799.00 512GB 12GB RAM £ 1,152.30 The lower price tag. The S Pen support. The better sounding speakers. 512GB 12GB RAM £ 1,000.00 £ 1,000.00 1TB 12GB RAM £ 1,000.00

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