I’m excited to see Galaxy S25 Ultra owners diving into the One UI 8.5 beta. Watching new features roll out is always fun.
But here’s the part I keep coming back to: Samsung is currently running the beta only for the S25 Ultra on T‑Mobile (unlocked), which means one carrier and one chipset. That’s a relatively contained environment. So why limit the beta to a single model at a time?
SamMobile recently shared a video of One UI 8.5 running on the S24 Ultra, which shows the software is already functional on that hardware. If it’s capable and already in testing, why hold it back from broader release?
From the S23 onward, the architecture is similar enough that these devices should be able to participate. Apple and Google manage multi‑model rollouts, so it feels like Samsung could do the same.
For now, as an S24 Ultra owner, I’ll live vicariously through my S25 Ultra friends — but I can’t help wondering if capable devices are being sidelined simply because they aren’t the newest flagship.
Again, not a poo-poo for the 25 owners. Have fun with the new features and let us know how it is going!
On that note though, bugs are still plentiful even with so‑called “stable” releases. So where’s the cut‑off? At what stage does Samsung decide the build is “good enough” to ship, knowing fixes will continue to roll out afterward? That’s the part I’m curious about — how they balance risk management with customer expectations across capable devices.
The beta is currently for the S25 series (excluding the Edge and FE models), so not just the S25U. There may be another phase in which it's opened up to other devices, but there are no details about that at this time. See this post for more:
Betas are usually on the latest device first, then expand to earlier devices after a few weeks.
But, it's also on factory unlocked devices on any carrier. The limit to locked T-Mobile devices is a carrier thing. AT&T and Verizon simply don't allow their locked devices in the beta. Samsung has no say in that.
And then there's all the unlocked S25 series devices worldwide that can be on the beta.
This same thought comes up every time a beta is published.
The latest flagship will always get it 1st, then the previous flagship, then everything else however they plan it. It's been that way since I had my note 20 years ago.
