Hands-on with all the new features for Android 12

After months of waiting, Samsung has finally released its Android 12 beta in the form of the One UI 4 beta. This latest version of Samsung’s Android skin doesn’t have many changes from last year’s One UI 3. However, the beta can be installed on selected Galaxy devices via the Samsung Members app.

Unsurprisingly, in line with Android 12, One UI 4 is focused on customizing for its significant changes. There are some major updates to privacy and device care, but for the most part, those changes are minor across the board.

We’ve rounded up the most notable changes in One UI 4 so you know what to expect when the stable release hits. Keep in mind that we won’t be covering all of the new Android 12 features as they are not specific to One UI. For more information on what to expect from Android 12 specifically, see the link below.

Continue reading: Android 12 features

Samsung One UI 4 Beta: Customization of the home screen

The most visible change to One UI 4 is this year’s customization options for both the home and lock screens. Starting with the home screen, widgets are updated with a new and refreshing look that adapts to the Material You redesign of Android 12. Widgets are flatter with a rounder appearance and certain widgets, such as the dual clock, now switch from light to dark mode depending on the time of day. Unlike Material You, these widgets don’t match their color to the background, but who knows, that could be a change we’ll see in the future.

Speaking of dark mode, Samsung made a subtle change here to create a slightly more seamless experience. Icons, background images and certain text fields are now slightly dimmed in dark mode. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of this change. As a result, I kept turning up the brightness in dark mode. I understand why Samsung made this change to make the experience a little more pleasing to the eyes, but I still prefer the old method of a dark mode on One UI 3.

Optimize screen locks

On the lock screen, you can now set the voice recorder as a quick access option. Also, media controls now see options to change the media output. Not only does this change take place on the lock screen, it is carried over to the notification screen as well. A user interface receives some minor updates for the always-on display; More specifically, users can now set it to only activate on notifications. Additionally, there are a handful of minor updates to the customization options for the AOD, which include some new animated stickers, as well as new themes in the Galaxy Store.

Last year, Samsung put a lot of focus on the One UI 3 notifications; There aren’t many changes this year, however. Notifications are slightly compressed and the background is less transparent in both light and dark modes. The quick settings tiles look almost identical to the One UI 3, but are a bit more compact. The brightness slider is now larger for easier access while holding devices with one hand. Other than that, there haven’t been any major changes to the way notifications are handled, and they still stay true to Samsung’s design language instead of Android 12’s Material You.

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Keyboard and sharing menu

Samsung has added some extra features to the keyboard, mainly some extra stickers and animated emojis that can now be quickly accessed with a tap of the keyboard. There is now support for more third-party integration as well; in particular, Grammarly can now be integrated to help with spelling mistakes. Again, Samsung is really pushing the animated emojis, which I have to admit, they’re cool, but I would have liked more development in other areas of the operating system.

The sharing menu is finally getting an update that will allow users to customize the order in which the sharing options appear in the menu. This is incredibly helpful and a great way to clean up this panel. I am excited to see that this is finally an addition to One UI.

Privacy changes

In line with Android 12’s focus on privacy, One UI 4 now gets an improved privacy dashboard with the ability to see at a glance which apps have used which permissions in the last seven days.

There’s an option to show clipboard, microphone, and camera access for all apps instead of an app-by-app basis. In addition, camera and microphone indicators now appear in the status bar when a particular app has accessed one or one of them. Clicking on it will reveal more information about when and which app she used.

Finally, there’s an additional setting for Android 12’s new “Private Compute Core” that allows you to erase data learned by your device and turn off smart responses and insert suggestions from the keyboard.

camera

Samsung made a few minor changes to the camera app, but overall it’s visually cleaner. Instead of the tree icons that indicate zoom options, Samsung switched them to actual numbers, a change that makes it easier to figure out which lens you’re using. The option to press and hold the shutter button to start recording the video is still there, but you can now press and hold the record button and swipe up to lock the recording. In addition, the scene optimizer symbol no longer appears in every light scene, but is presented in scenarios with weak light or landscape. Finally, the Pro camera mode settings have been rearranged slightly for a cleaner look, and the gridlines are on by default.

One UI 4.0 features: Miscellaneous

This update is also relatively small overall compared to the update from Android 12. There are a couple of other additional updates we noticed:

• One UI 4 gets new loading animations. They look clean and have a modern feel compared to the One UI 3 animations.
• Picture and picture and multitasking windows have rounded corners instead of square ones.
• Device Care has a new “Protect Battery” option that allows users to limit the maximum charge to 85% in order to extend the life of the battery.
• AR emoji can be set as contact photos.
• Samsung Good Lock now supports third-party icon packs that can be downloaded from the Google Play Store.
• You can now add emojis to your photos or videos using Samsung’s built-in photo editor. In addition, there is now an Object Delete option in the Labs section that allows you to remove objects or people in images using a similar content-aware fill from Adobe Photoshop.

What do you think of Samsung One UI 4 so far? Let us know in the comments.