We went hands-on with One UI 8 "beta" on a Galaxy S25 Ultra

Well, if you needed more evidence that Samsung really will launch the One UI 8 beta program much sooner than One UI 7, we have it: we have already tested out a One UI 8 beta firmware (S938BXXU3ZYEA, where the Z indicates beta software) on a Galaxy S25 Ultra!

That's right: Samsung is already internally testing beta builds of One UI 8, and we managed to get our hands on what appears to be the very first beta firmware and took it for a spin.

But don't get too excited just yet. This is unlikely to be the beta firmware that Samsung will roll out to customers later this month. It merely has any changes or new features compared to the non-beta One UI 8 firmware we have tested on several Galaxy devices over the past few weeks.

In our initial testing, we could only notice one change. Samsung has added a glass-like transparent background to more pop-up menus across the user interface and various apps. Earlier, we saw transparent pop-up menus in apps like Gallery, and on the beta firmware, the transparency effect has been applied to elements such as the video resolution menu in the camera app.

For all intents and purposes, this beta firmware is exactly the same as the build we tested in the video you see below. And it has us a little concerned: One UI 8 so far seems like an extremely minor update, and if Samsung intends to launch the One UI 8 beta program this month, we don't think the company has enough time to implement anything more than what we have already seen.

One UI 7 is a massive update so we can forgive Samsung for keeping things simple for the next version, but it's still disappointing. Hopefully the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Flip 7, which will launch with One UI 8 and Android 16 onboard, will come with some new features that Samsung will port over to other devices later this year.