One UI 5.0 (and Android 13) is a considerably huge update for Samsung Galaxy smartphones (reaching nearly 3GB in size over-the-air for some of them), and Samsung has been steadily rolling it out to more and more devices over the last couple of weeks to achieve its goal of possibly completing the rollout completely before 2023 (although whether the company succeeds is a discussion for another day, like, you know, sometime in 2023).
One UI 5.0 brings with it plenty of new features. A dizzying array of options to customize the lock screen is among the biggest of those features, but recently I've begun to wonder: does all that lock screen customization actually make a difference for most people?
It doesn't to me, and it's simply because I rarely, if ever, use the lock screen for anything but quickly glancing at a notification. I've gotten into this habit of picking the phone off my desk or out of my pockets and immediately using the fingerprint scanner to unlock it and then checking for notifications, which means I bypass the lock screen entirely in most scenarios. And I'm sure that's the case for many who are reading this article.
Lock screen customization isn't everything it's been hyped up to be
What I'm getting at here is that one of the biggest One UI 5.0 features doesn't the improve the user experience for me, and probably many other Galaxy users. I am happy that Samsung decided to put in the lock screen customization features (more details on those in the video below) for those who want it. But, for me, they are more or less useless and not worth the hype everyone (including, admittedly, some of us here at SamMobile) has created around them.
Thankfully, despite all those new features, Samsung has been super quick at releasing the final/stable versions of Android 13 and One UI 5.0 to its smartphones and tablets, so you won't hear me complaining about the company spending so much time and energy into making the lock screen so extensively customizable (though I guess it wasn't exactly a monumental achievement given much of it has been taken from Samsung's own Good Lock app).
More than two dozen Galaxy devices have already been upgraded to Android 13/One UI 5.0, which is a record that has the competition (every Android manufacturer) scrambling to emulate. But will anyone be able to come close to Samsung's handling of the Android 13 update, or will Samsung continue to be the king of software updates for the foreseeable future?
That's a pretty important question that we have had since Samsung first started releasing the Android 13 One UI 5.0 update for eligible devices. And we think it's safe to say that the answer is a resounding no, at least this year.
Maybe 2023 will see other companies stepping up to provide better after-sales software support, although the sheer number of phones and (the Android industry's best) tablets Samsung launches every year means it will likely stay ahead of everyone as long as it continues to release OS upgrades so quickly going forward.
