Samsung began rolling out One UI 8.5 on Wednesday, May 6, starting in South Korea, and will push the update to a much wider set of devices beginning May 11 across Europe, India, North America, Latin America, Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
The stable rollout started with the Galaxy S25 series — including S25 Edge and S25 FE models — and Samsung’s foldables, and the package now affects the Galaxy S24, Z Fold 7 and Flip 7 as well as Z Fold 6 and Flip 6. The update also reaches Galaxy Tab S11 and the Galaxy Tab S10 series, and expands to multiple A-series models including the Galaxy A56, A55, A54, A36, A35 and A34. Samsung has already added the Galaxy A36 5G, Galaxy A37 and Galaxy A57 to the One UI 8.5 program.
One UI 8.5 is built on Android 16 and is Samsung’s mid-cycle feature update between One UI 8.0 and the forthcoming One UI 9. The release bundles a liquid glass design, an expanded suite of Galaxy AI features and advanced security improvements. Users updating from One UI 8.0 should expect a download of roughly 4 to 4.5 GB, while those moving from the One UI 8.5 beta will see a bridge update of about 480 to 580 MB.
Weight behind the rollout comes from the scale and timing. One UI 8.5 first shipped pre-installed on the Galaxy S26 series when that phone launched on March 11, 2026, and the update’s beta life has been unusually long: Samsung ran One UI 8.5 in beta testing since December 2025 and pushed 10 beta builds before making the stable release available. Samsung says that was the longest One UI beta cycle it has run to date.
Context matters: most of the new AI features were exclusive to the Galaxy S26 at launch. With this release Samsung is extending many of those AI capabilities to the Galaxy S25 and S24 and to older devices, while promising a smaller set of AI features for the last three generations of Galaxy A-series phones under the Awesome Intelligence label. Samsung has said older A-series devices released before 2023 are unlikely to receive the update.
Tension in the rollout is pragmatic rather than technical. Carrier-locked phones can take a few extra days to receive updates compared with unlocked models, and staged rollouts typically take four to eight weeks to reach all eligible devices worldwide. Owners of A-, M- and F-series devices should expect their turn sometime in June 2026, putting some models weeks behind S- and foldable owners who get the May wave.
The update’s expansion of AI beyond Samsung’s newest flagships is notable but measured: Samsung moved features that were once exclusive to the S26 onto older hardware, but it keeps a reduced feature set for midrange A-series handsets. At the same time One UI 8.5’s broad device list — from flagship S and foldable models to several A-series phones and two generations of tablets — signals a deliberate push to standardize the look and core AI experience across Samsung’s recent lineup.
What happens next is already on Samsung’s schedule. One UI 9 is planned for release in the coming months, and it is expected to arrive alongside Samsung’s next foldable phones. This One UI 8.5 rollout therefore reads as both an end-of-cycle polish for Android 16-based software and a bridge toward the next major refresh that will accompany the company’s new hardware launches.
