It’s been a very long wait for the One UI 7.0 update, excruciatingly long, some might say. The easiest way to get the update right now is to buy a Galaxy S25 phone. Despite the fact that the One UI 7.0 beta has been out for months now and the builds have been stable, there’s no sign of a release in the near future.
Recent reports are raising a very concerning possibility that we may have to wait for a couple of months. It’s been claimed that Samsung won’t release One UI 7.0 for devices like the Galaxy S24, Galaxy Z Fold/Flip 6, and more until April this year. Since it’s likely going to be a staggered release as it always is, this means that some device owners may need to wait until May or June to get their hands on the latest version.
This has inevitably led many to question, what’s the hold up? The more I think about it, the more it seems that it’s not Samsung’s doing. There’s no conceivable reason for Samsung to hold up the One UI 7.0 release for compatible devices, but is it having to do that because Google is asking it to?
Samsung’s gone all in with Galaxy AI features on One UI 7.0. Many of those features are powered by Google’s AI services, including Google Gemini, which would come under increasing load as millions of existing Samsung devices are updated to the latest version of its software. The numbers add up very quickly once you look at just how many phones Samsung sells.
The company shipped 37 million units of the Galaxy S24 series alone. All of those phones are eligible for One UI 7.0. The Galaxy S24 Ultra was 2024’s best-selling Android phone. The foldables and other Galaxy models together increase that figure by multiple millions.
Samsung is also projecting over 40 million units shipped of the new Galaxy S25 series, with a lot of them already in customers’ hands after a robust pre-order period. All Galaxy S25 owners get access to Google’s Gemini Advanced, which costs $19.99 per month, free for six months.
Now we know that One UI 7.0 is almost ready for public release. If it wasn’t, Samsung wouldn’t be shipping it out of the box on the Galaxy S25 series. It’s also known that the new Galaxy A series phones will also be rocking One UI 7.0 straight from the factory. These devices are always among Samsung’s best-selling phones, so that’s millions of additional devices that will ping Google’s AI servers.
I feel that Google isn’t quite ready, or at least willing to accommodate, massive AI usage by more than 100 million Samsung phones. It’s not just these devices that are tapping into its AI resources. Google is also pushing AI across its own Pixel phones and across all of its various online products and services, so perhaps it’s opting for a bit more judicious use of its AI compute.
This seems like the only logical explanation as to why Samsung would delay the One UI 7.0 release so much. Look at its track record for past major updates. The beta was always launched in Q4 with the public release wrapped up before the new year. Even if we were to give it some extra time considering that One UI 7.0 is a far more significant upgrade, there’s absolutely no reason why it shouldn’t have been released by now.
We exclusively reported today that Samsung has had to sacrifice One UI 7.1 because there’s just no time to introduce that incremental update. Samsung and Google have a very close partnership as the two are also working on new augmented reality experiences, so it’s not unusual for the Korean giant to extend this courtesy to its partner.
The burden is ultimately being borne by users, who may have to wait for Android 15 even until after Google dives deep into Android 16 at its annual I/O conference in May this year. Let’s just hope we don’t see a repeat of this for One UI 8.0 next year.