LG's latest Android skin kinda looks like Samsung's One UI

During the lead-up to the Black Friday madness, LG on Wednesday released a video on its latest Android skin. Dubbed LG UX 9.0, the interface looks to greatly improve on UX 8.0 aesthetics while taking a few cues from Samsung’s One UI Android skin.

To give you an idea, here are UX 9.0 and One UI’s takes on the notification panel:

As you can see in the comparison, UX 9.0’s notification panel places most of the icons in the lower-half of the display when fully open. Samsung’s One UI pulls off a similar trick, all for the sake of easier one-handed use. The main difference seems to be the presence of a brightness slider in One UI and its absence in UX 9.0.

Here’s how the Dialer app looks in UX 9.0 and One UI:

Again, the UX 9.0 Dialer app bears a striking aesthetic similarity to the One UI Dialer app. Both apps feature sections horizontally organized along the bottom, with the section you’re currently in highlighted in some shade of green. The section names differ, but the idea remains the same.

Last up is the Clock app:

You’ll notice the sections across the bottom of the UX 9.0 and One UI Clock apps are aesthetically similar and use a shade of blue. The words used for the sections are the exact same, though the Stopwatch and Timer sections are flipped. Both apps use ovals to separate the cities, though the One UI Clock app places the cities closer to the lower-half of the screen.

Also read: LG wants to reclaim customer trust by releasing Android 10 this year

Even with a similar aesthetic to One UI, LG UX 9.0 seems to be a solid improvement over UX 8.0. The apps have more of a unified look to them, and the presence of a system-wide dark mode is always nice to see. In particular, the Gallery app looks more streamlined than before and has more space for your albums.

As of this writing, UX 9.0 availability remains an unknown. The Android skin debuted on the LG G8X ThinQ, though it’s based on Android 9 Pie. LG kicked off an Android 10 preview program in South Korea and plans to release a stable version in the country by year’s end. As such, we can expect a global rollout sometime in 2020.