If you want the latest Android software on your phone, Samsung hasn’t been the place to go recently. But it looks like the next OS, Android 16, will be built into Samsung’s One UI 8 in a more timely manner.
Android 15 was released on Google Pixel in October 2024, but its first appearance on Samsung was in January this year, when it was found from launch on the Samsung Galaxy S25 series of phones as part of One UI 7. Other Galaxy phones like the S24 series, are only beginning to see One UI 7 from this month.
According to a report at SamMobile, things will be different later this year. Such a delay with One UI 7 could have a knock-on effect for UI 8, you might have thought. But maybe not: “Multiple reports have claimed that Samsung is planning to release it much faster than One UI 7, and that it may even launch its foldable flagships in the second half of the year with One UI 8—based on Android 16—preloaded,” the report says, corroborating those other reports with what it describes as “good news.”
The timetable is that Google’s plan could be to release Android 16 in June or July 2025. This means that Samsung could launch this year’s folding phones, the Galaxy Z Flip 7 and the Galaxy Z Fold 7 “just a few days or weeks after the release of stable Android 16,” SamMobile insists.
There have already been three betas of Android 16, and we’ll see more at Google I/O next month and there are reports that Google is working to an accelerated release schedule.
If all goes according to plan, that could fit for the new folders. Last year, the Z Fold 6 and Z Flip 6 were announced on July 10, 2024, though it’s possible this timetable was also prompted by the Olympics. In 2023, the announcement came a little later, in the last week of July.
The next phones to get Android 16 would be the most recent flagships, that is, the Samsung Galaxy S25, S25+ and S25 Ultra — it’s believed Samsung is already testing the UI for these three phones.
If the 2025 folding phones have Android 16 pre-installed, they could also beat the Google Pixel 10 series to the punch, which hasn’t happened before — though that fact could cast doubt on this new report.