Despite heavy delays, Samsung’s first Android 15 beta might be a buggy mess

Ben Schoon | Nov 15 2024 - 8:35 am PT

While it’s heavily delayed, Samsung is working on its first beta release for One UI 7, its Android 15 update, but the word on the street is that the first release could be quite buggy.

For the past several years, Samsung has been moving up its annual major Android upgrades, with updates coming earlier and earlier, and much closer to Google’s release on Pixel devices. However, that’s been broken with this year’s One UI 7 development cycle, which has been delayed time and time again. Originally expected as early as July or August, Samsung ended up confirmed that the update will be released at some point before the end of the year, but that the first stable release for Android 15 wouldn’t arrive until the Galaxy S25 launches in 2025.

Despite the lengthy delays, though, Samsung is apparently still struggling to ensure that this beta won’t be full of bugs and issues. Ice Universe says that the first Android 15 beta from Samsung will “not be launched smoothly” due to “too many bugs” that persist even in the latest versions.

Bugs and issues are always expected in early software previews like this, but Samsung’s past few annual releases have performed quite well from the get-go.

Of course, the reason for this buggy beta is that One UI 7 is a big update on top of Android 15, Samsung’s first big overhaul in years. The update delivers some major visual changes to the platform, heavily revamps animations throughout, and is said to set the foundation for additional AI features that would launch later on.

There’s still no official word on when the first One UI 7 beta could land, but it’s rumored it could arrive next week.