Samsung launched One UI 8.5 with the Galaxy S26, S26+, and S26 Ultra last month. Despite the fact that this version hasn’t even made it to older Samsung devices yet, the Korean company is now already testing One UI 9, which is based on Android 17.
Samsung Galaxy S26 5G
Google has released some beta builds of Android 17 already, so the timeline isn’t really that surprising. The first build of One UI 9 based on Android 17 for the Galaxy S26 Ultra has now been spotted on Samsung’s servers, and some enterprising folks have already installed it on the company’s latest flagship smartphone.
The screenshots above and below are from this build running on a Galaxy S26 Ultra. Since this is a very early build, not a lot of things are new. Visually, it looks very similar to One UI 8.5, but the volume and brightness sliders in the quick panel are bigger.
One UI 9
Samsung has also made Parental Controls a separate entry in the Settings app, taking it out of Digital Wellbeing. That seems to be it for now, but undoubtedly Samsung will test more One UI 9 builds in the near future and they will incorporate more changes.
