Samsung has already updated its flagship Galaxy S23 lineup to One UI 6, its proprietary interface based on Android 14. Other smartphones from the manufacturer will soon follow suit, so let’s take a look at what changes the One UI 6 update brings with it.

1. New font

One of the most notable innovations in One UI 6 is the new font, which is simply called “Standard” in the settings.

One UI 6: 11 innovations in the Samsung interface on Android 14

It’s quite compact, easy to read, and most importantly, the main menu in the Ukrainian localization doesn’t have strange shifts as it used to be. Now the menu looks more neat.

However, for those who don’t like the new font, you can choose another one, such as the standard Android Roboto, or download a third-party font from the font library provided by Samsung.

2. New design of notifications and sorting by priority

The notification panel in One UI 6 has been slightly redesigned. Now, incoming notifications are more clearly separated from each other, instead of being listed together.

In addition, they are now sorted by priority by default.

How it is determined is not very clear, but in general, emergency notifications are displayed above the rest.

3. New quick settings panel

Another significant update concerns the Quick Settings panel. Traditionally, it can be accessed by dragging the notification curtain down again. In the previous version of One UI, all the icons were on the same panel, and they could be swapped, removed, or added. Only the buttons for controlling smart devices in the home, media output, and brightness were in separate blocks. In One UI 6, this panel has been redesigned.

Now it is divided into several separate blocks, the user will always have access to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth in the upper part, while the lower part contains brightness control, screen duplication to other devices, and smart home control. In between is the familiar quick settings panel, which can be organized and changed at your own discretion.

Interestingly, you can now customize quicker access to the Quick Settings panel, as strange as it may sound. It can be assigned to a swipe down in the upper right part of the screen, while access to notifications will be opened by swiping the left side.

4. New widgets

One UI 6 has new widgets for the Camera and Weather system applications. For the latter, you can now display a widget with additional weather data for the next day, as well as a widget with an animation of the current weather condition. They are quite nice and adapt to the wallpaper and theme of the smartphone.

But much more interesting is the camera widget, which was not previously available in One UI in this form. The thing is that it allows you not only to launch the camera app, but also to do it immediately with certain settings that the user has previously selected.

For example, with the main or front camera, in portrait, night, professional, or other shooting modes, which can be selected in the camera settings. This is quite convenient and allows you to create several different widgets for the desired shooting mode at once.

The user can name the widget and add a background image to it, so it will be harder to confuse different shooting modes.

5. New media widget view in the notification panel

The Media Control widget that appears in the notification bar when you play music or videos has been redesigned to show the album artwork in full view and a new animated timeline. Overall, it looks more modern.

6. New emoji design

Emojis have been redrawn in One UI 6.

7. New camera interface

Two new quick settings have been added to the interface of the standard Camera app, located to the left of the viewfinder. Now users can quickly switch to the maximum resolution of the main camera and create an animated photo.

In the camera settings, One UI 6 added an interesting option that allows you to choose the degree of interference of algorithms in post-processing.

This can be maximum optimization, medium optimization, or minimal optimization – no post-processing at all. The latter two options may be more useful on devices with slower processors, and switching to them will speed up photo storage.

8. Updating the gallery and editing photos

The standard gallery in One UI 6 has received a number of small updates, and now a new button has been added to the toolbar below each image, which allows you to quickly see information about the photo, when and where it was taken.

You can also quickly change it by selecting the option to automatically enhance it, remove objects, or add a background effect to the portrait.

It is worth noting that these editing options work quite well.

9. New “Battery” menu

In the One UI 6 settings, the Battery menu is now in a separate section, whereas previously battery information was in the general Battery and Maintenance menu. In the new section, the user can see an updated power consumption graph and change charging settings.

In addition, there is an option to limit the battery charge to 85% to increase its service life.

It is also now possible to view information about the battery capacity, which is important for deciding whether to replace it.

10. Google Drive files in the calendar

You can now add files from Google Drive to events in One UI 6 calendar, which is useful if you need a reminder of a certain document. You don’t have to search for it separately in the storage.

11. Improved search

The built-in search engine in One UI 6 is now smarter, and it can search not only for settings or apps by name, but also for information within some apps.

For example, search can find songs and playlists on Spotify and videos on YouTube.

When will my smartphone update to One UI 6?

Recently, Samsung presented a revised list of models that will receive an update to the new version of the interface. At the time of this writing, One UI 6 has already arrived on the flagship Galaxy S23 and S22 lines. Other models of smartphones and tablets will receive the update later, here is a list of these devices and the estimated date of their update to One UI 6:

2024-02 – Galaxy A04e
2024-02 – Galaxy A04
2024-02 – Galaxy A04s
2024-02 – Galaxy A13
2023-12 – Galaxy A14
2024-01 – Galaxy A23
2023-12 – Galaxy A24
2023-12 – Galaxy A33 5G
2023-11 – Galaxy A34 5G
2023-12 – Galaxy A52
2023-12 – Galaxy A53 5G
2023-11 – Galaxy A54 5G
2023-12 – Galaxy A72
2023-12 – Galaxy A73 5G
2023-12 – Galaxy Flip3 5G
2023-12 – Galaxy Flip4
2023-11 – Galaxy Flip5
2023-12 – Galaxy Fold3 5G
2023-12 – Galaxy Fold4
2023-11 – Galaxy Fold5
2023-12 – Galaxy S21 FE 5G
2023-12 – Galaxy S21 5G
2023-12 – Galaxy S21+ 5G
2023-12 – Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G
2024-02 – Galaxy M13
2023-12 – Galaxy M14 5G
2024-02 – Galaxy M23 5G
2023-12 – Galaxy M33 5G
2023-12 – Galaxy M34 5G
2023-12 – Galaxy M53 5G
2023-11 – Galaxy Tab S6 Lite
2024-02 – Galaxy Tab A7 Lite
2024-01 – Galaxy Tab S7 FE
2024-02 – Galaxy Tab A8
2023-12 – Galaxy Tab S8
2023-12 – Galaxy Tab S8 5G
2023-11 – Galaxy Tab S9
2023-11 – Galaxy Tab S9 5G
2023-12 – Galaxy Tab S8+ 5G
2023-11 – Galaxy Tab S9+ 5G
2023-12 – Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra 5G
2023-11 – Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra 5G

As you can see, the update plan covers a fairly large list of models that should receive One UI 6 this year. In general, Samsung plans to complete the rollout of the update by the end of February 2024, just in time for the release of the new flagship Galaxy S24 series, which will have its own software innovations and will most likely come with One UI 6.1.

To summarize

In general, like previous One UI updates, and the Android operating system updates of recent years, the changes in the new interface from Samsung cannot be called significant. However, they are noticeable and significantly refresh the experience of using One UI 6. Especially given the slightly smoother animations and general optimizations that the update to Android 14 brings.