South Korean tech giant Samsung has announced that it has started rolling out One UI 8.5 to older devices. Well, devices two generations older than the current Galaxy S26 line, anyway. The specific list includes the Galaxy S25 and S24 series, including their FE variants, the Galaxy Z Fold7 and Flip7, Fold6 and Flip6, as well as the Galaxy Tab S11 and Tab S10 series.
The biggest addition to these devices via the One UI 8.5 update is AirDrop support, via Quick Share. As you’d imagine, the Google Pixel 10 line was the very first to have gained the feature, but among Samsung devices, it was the Galaxy S26 family, with them shipping with the aforementioned update. As their names suggest, this allows for Android and iOS devices to share files more seamlessly by making their seemingly separate file sharing tech interoperable.
Beyond that, we’ve seen some of the features via the beta of the One UI 8.5. Continuing with the theme of connectivity, the update also allows for other Samsung devices with the update to communicate with each other via Bluetooth LE and Auracast. You can also see what’s in the storage of other Samsung devices via the My Files file explorer app. And if you’ve granted the necessary permissions, Quick Share can also recognise people in pictures, and proactively suggest sharing said picture to the relevant people.
For content creators, there’s a change to Photo Assist that lets you keep generating new images without having to save every change you make. And finally, there’s Failed Authentication Lock, that locks your phone after too many failed attempts at accessing locked apps. If you have one of the devices listed above and have not gotten the prompt to update, you may have to manually check for updates in order to download and install it.
(Source: Samsung)
