How power saving mode is changing in One UI 8.5

One UI 8.5 brings a huge visual change to the battery information screen, making it both prettier and easier to get the battery life information you need. Samsung is also changing how power saving mode works, or at least the maximum power saving mode.

On One UI 8 and older, power saving mode settings are presented as toggles. You can limit CPU speed, decrease maximum screen brightness by 10%, switch to standard (60Hz) refresh rate, turn on dark mode, and set the screen timeout to 30 seconds. If you want maximum power saving, you can turn on the Limit apps and Home screen option.

Now, there are two modes: Standard and Maximum. Standard mode isn't something new — Samsung has grouped all the basic power saving mode settings under that name. Functionally, it's the same as before, letting you select what kind of limits are applied.

Maximum mode does what the Limit apps and Home screen option did. It allows a few essential apps to run along with some apps that you manually select, but while earlier you could select up to four additional apps to run in maximum power saving mode, One UI 8.5 lets you choose as many additional apps as you need.

That's not all. Instead of a static home screen with a black background and eight app shortcuts at the bottom, the maximum power saving mode now only switches to a black background. The usual home screen and the app drawer remain, only with all the disabled apps greyed out so you can't open them.

Samsung has made another small but useful change. Earlier, you had to make sure you enabled or disabled the maximum setting before you turned on power saving mode. It was unchangeable once power saving mode was toggled on. That's no longer the case — you can switch between Standard and Maximum modes on the fly.

It’s important to note that the details provided above are based on how power saving mode works in the first beta of One UI 8.5. While we don't expect it to happen, some things could still change by the time the final version is ready.