Samsung cleans up its Android interface with new One UI skin – Digital Trends

Details about Samsung’s upcoming foldable phone may have stolen the show at the Samsung Developer Conference keynote, but Samsung had some other news to show off. Namely, the company took the wraps off of a new Android skin for its phones going forward. The new skin is called One UI and apart from the sweet visual aspects it has on offer, it could make using your phone that little bit easier.
We were able to check out One UI for ourselves at the Samsung Developer Conference, and can confirm that the overall experience seemed very clean and stripped back. It’s not quite on the same level as stock Android — it still has Samsung apps and services — but compared to Samsung Experience, it’s much more basic, which is a good thing.
In One UI, Samsung seems to be prioritizing being able to use your phone with one hand. Most of Samsung’s apps had the majority of their controls at the bottom of the user interface, with other information — that you might not want or need to interact with — being found at the top. For example, when you open the Settings app, the top third of the interface simply says “Settings,” and offers a small button to activate search in the app. Scroll down, and the app will start to use that space — but the advantage is that it’s easy to tap a menu item with one hand. Other apps featured a similar layout, including the Clock app and Photos app.
We also saw a new “Dark Mode,” which gives apps a black background to make it easier to read elements on the screen in the dark without straining your eyes. Speaking of background colors, Samsung is also making the experience between software and hardware a little more uniform by color-matching aspects of the interface with the color of the phone itself. So, for example, if you buy a purple phone, you’ll find different purple user interface elements too.
Other changes to the software are less subtle. For example, in the Messages app the app will be split into two sections — a preview section and an “interaction area.” With these two sections, you’ll be able to select what messages you want to read, which will appear in the viewing area without opening a new screen.
While initially it wasn’t quite clear, Samsung confirmed to us that One UI is indeed aimed at being the successor to Samsung Experience, which is itself the successor to TouchWiz. It’s clear that Samsung has put a lot of work into creating a clean interface since the days of TouchWiz.
Samsung’s One UI will be available to the Galaxy S9, S9 Plus, and Note 9 in early January, and will presumably show up in Samsung’s other phones going forward. If you want to know more, you can also check our guide on how to uninstall Apps in your Andriod.
Nothing is trying to bridge the great blue/green bubble divide for Android users of iMessage. This is not a personal crusade to shatter walls and open windows, as much as Nothing CEO Carl Pei would want you to believe that. Instead, Nothing is piggybacking on tech created by New York-based startup Sunbird. 
Technically, the Sunbird app can be installed on any Android phone and it features a blue bubble for all iMessage text exchanges involving an Android phone. No more green bubble shame that could get you kicked out of groups for disrupting the harmony or even slim your dating chances. That’s how bad it is! 
Nothing is adopting the Sunbird tech and bundling it as its very own app under the name Nothing Chats. But here’s the fun part. The app only works on the Nothing Phone 2 and not the Nothing Phone 1. And this life-altering boon will only be bestowed upon users in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., or the EU bloc.
The app is currently in the beta phase, which means some iMessage features will be broken or absent. Once the app is downloaded on your Nothing Phone 2, you can create a new account or sign up with your Apple ID to get going with blue bubble texts. 
Just in case you’re concerned, all messages will be end-to-end encrypted, and the app doesn’t collect any personal information, such as the users’ geographic location or the texts exchanged. Right now, Sunbird and Nothing have not detailed the iMessage features and those that are broken. 
We made iMessage for Android…
The Washington Post tried an early version of the Nothing Chats app and notes that the blue bubble system works just fine. Texts between an Android device and an iPhone are neatly arranged in a thread, and multimedia exchange is also allowed at full quality. 
However, message editing is apparently not available, and a double-tap gesture for responding with a quick emoji doesn’t work either. We don’t know when these features will be added. Nothing’s Sunbird-based app will expand to other territories soon. 
Sunbird, however, offers a handful of other tricks aside from serving the iMessage blue bubble on Android. It also brings all your other messaging apps, such as WhatsApp and Instagram, in one place. This isn’t an original formula, as Beeper offers the same convenience.
Today marks a milestone in the era of foldable smartphones as Samsung officially puts its legendary first-generation Galaxy Fold out to pasture.
After four years on the market, the original Galaxy Fold will no longer receive regular security updates. To be fair, the first Fold was already living on borrowed time, as it was left out of last year’s Android 13 update. However, when Samsung launched the expensive foldable, it promised a full four years of security updates for the device.
Earlier this month, Samsung announced a slew of new products to end 2023 on a high note. Alongside some new tablets and a pair of earbuds, one of those new products was the Galaxy S23 FE. It looks a lot like the other S23 phones released earlier this year, but it has some lower specs and a cheaper price. When Samsung announced the S23 FE on October 3, it said the phone would be available for $600.
However, it looks like something changed between then and now. The Galaxy S23 FE officially went on sale on October 26, but it doesn’t cost the $600 Samsung claimed it would. If you buy the phone from Samsung’s website, you’ll have to pay $630 for the base model with 128GB of storage — a seemingly random increase of $30. Samsung didn’t previously confirm how much the 256GB variant would cost, but it’s currently listed on Samsung’s site for $690.
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