Samsung's One UI 7 delay has fans thinking of jumping ship to other brands

Last week, Samsung made a big announcement related to One UI 7, its upcoming software update that will bring its smartphones up to Android 15. Unfortunately, the announcement was not great news: One UI 7 will not be released on its usual schedule. Instead, Samsung is holding off the launch until early 2025 to coincide with the debut of the Galaxy S25 series.

As one would expect, Samsung fans did not warmly welcome this announcement. Many thought Samsung was making a big mistake, and even the ones who seemed to understand the reasoning behind the delay still weren’t happy about it.

This left us wondering just how things split. Are there more people who think a One UI 7 delay is understandable, or more who don’t? We ran a poll in an article about Samsung’s One UI 7 announcement to get a feel for what our readers think. As it turns out, not only are a majority of our readers upset about this, but it is making them think of abandoning Samsung in the future.

Poll results: Do you mind the extra months of wait to get One UI 7?

A split three ways

The chart above clarifies that fans are mostly evenly split among the three options. The “No, I’m fine waiting” option is still the smallest one, technically, with just 28.12% of the more than 2,500 votes received. Meanwhile, slightly more folks — 34.41% — think the One UI 7 delay is OK as long as things return to normal for Android 16.

However, the most significant piece of the pie goes to people who not only don’t like this delay but also think it could cause them to skip Samsung phones in the future. At 37.47% of responders, this is not overwhelmingly more than the other two categories, but it is certainly notable that it’s officially the largest category.

Interestingly, the most vocal people in the comments are the ones who are totally OK with this delay, suggesting the minority of responders are more vocal about their opinions than those who are upset about the state of One UI 7. “This is a big One UI overhaul,” said commenter kennyg357, for example. “It can’t be rushed, and it will be worth the wait.” That is currently the top-voted comment in the thread.

Commenter ArchangelRenzoku agrees:

Personally, I’m OK with waiting for major OS updates because I’d rather have a complete and fully-functional software package, rather than get handed a half-baked update with missing features and loads of bugs…like they force-feed to Pixel users and then fix later with ‘Pixel Drips.’ Samsung is holding their development teams to a higher standard than AOSP AND Google, and I support that.

However, not all the comments defended Samsung’s decision. User notforhire said, “If Samsung gets back on schedule, no harm, no foul. If not…” The ellipsis trail is unexplained, but it suggests this user voted to possibly abandon Samsung if it can’t get One UI 8 (as we assume it would be called) back to the schedule to which fans have become accustomed.

Meanwhile, a commenter named Paul doesn’t mince words: “If Samsung keeps on playing games with the update, I’m going to another brand of phone.” Although this user doesn’t mention which brand would be on their radar, other commenters suggested Google Pixel phones as being next in line.

One UI 7 is an enormous shift in schedule, but will it be worth it?

Traditionally, Samsung has been one of the fastest brands in releasing timely phone updates. It is a well-oiled machine regarding monthly security patches for Galaxy smartphones across the entire pricing gamut. In the past, it has also been exceptionally quick to roll out Android upgrades. For example, in 2023, every active Samsung flagship had Android 14 before the end of that year. Considering the size and scope of Samsung’s portfolio, this is an incredible achievement.

It is a seismic shift for the company to slow its roll now and announce that Android 15 will not land until 2025. However, it could be that the user comments above are accurate. It’s possible Samsung is working on a significant overhaul to One UI with the next update, and it simply needs extra time to do that.

If that’s true, the question then becomes whether or not that wait will be worth it. So far, we’ve had an early sneak peek at One UI 7 and it was…fine? It borrowed a lot from iOS, especially with icon redesigns, which was a bit disappointing. It also had some other controversial changes, such as splitting the Quick Settings Tiles off from the notification dropdown.

Time will tell if fans think this upcoming delay was worth it for these alterations. In the meantime, let us know how you feel in the comments below!