Samsung Messages to Potentially Receive a Massive Upgrade in One UI 8.5 for Gala

[GiantFan]

A new UI framework for Samsung Messages in One UI 8.5

Samsung’s “Liquid Glass” design language in One UI 8.5 isn’t just a visual effect — it requires new UI components, new animation hooks, and new rendering layers. Apps that want to use Liquid Glass need to be rebuilt on top of Samsung’s updated UI framework.

Samsung Messages is one of those apps. 

New UI Framework

• Liquid Glass blur effects
• New message bubble animations
• New reaction UI
• New long‑press interaction menu
• New media preview cards
• New chat header design
• New transitions and gestures

New RCS Features

• Full emoji reaction support
• Inline reaction rendering
• Improved group chat controls
• Better media handling
• More reliable Jibe provisioning
• Possibly message editing (if Samsung adopts the Jibe API for it)

This is the “big update” that reviewers haven’t seen yet is because of one of the following three reasons:  

• They’re not using Samsung Messages
• They’re not testing on S25 devices
• The UI changes aren’t fully live in the beta yet

Yes, I know everyone has every right to be angry. 🤬 The rumors of Samsung resurrecting Samsung Messages from the ashes were all false and just speculation. I am as angry as everyone else. Today, I was told by a Verizon Representative that I would need to migrate to Google Messages as of July 6, 2026, because of this disappointing news. We are being forced to use a messaging app that is inferior to Samsung Messages.

I thought for sure that Samsung was doing something worthwhile with Samsung Messages, when there was a stutter fix of the app in One UI 8.5 Beta 7's changelog. The Now Nudge feature will now be a shell of itself as it was supposed to work with Samsung Messages. The lack of carrier support for the app is what has done it in. Verizon and T-Mobile were the only two carriers willing to support the RCS Chat feature that Samsung tried to reintroduce through Google's Jibe Platform. The road block to that was Verizon and T-Mobile were only willing to support the RCS Chat feature on the Samsung Galaxy S25 series and all future Galaxy series phones. Samsung apparently has decided that the effort to keep the app alive was an unsustainable effort.

[Pianodude58]

And what's the source?

[DogGoneIt1989]

Sammy Guru, aka Jeff Springer!

[DogGoneIt1989]

He is not always correct!
I can see Samsung doing this for the S26 series to sell more phones to the die hard Samsung messages fan bois.

[CEParsons]

If Samsung has been trying to convince Google to allow them to universally provision Jibe in Samsung Messages, that would help make sense of why they've kept the app on life support thus far.

Personally, I would just like some clear messaging on this. The current official literature seems to suggest that Google Messages is required for RCS in the vast majority of cases (including my own - I have zero access to chat features in SMessages,) yet the app appears to be getting a visual refresh, suggesting it isn't totally dead yet.

I understand they can't disclose what's happening in closed door discussions, but some official statements would be quite welcome!

[GiantFan]

What carrier do you have? In the US, Verizon and T-Mobile are they only carriers permitting RCS support for Samsung Messages on S25 series devices.

[CEParsons]

Cricket, S24+ factory unlocked. Chat Features are totally absent in SMessages in my case.

[GiantFan]

Older Galaxy models cannot use RCS in Samsung Messages because carriers won’t support Samsung’s legacy RCS stack.
The only reason Galaxy S25 series users can use RCS in Samsung Messages, because Samsung is now using Google’s RCS backend.
But this is only active on S25 devices using Verizon or T-Mobile.

[meself]

Rcs is also carrier dependent

[Darryls]

S23u s24 and zfold 6 all rcs support on T-Mobile here for s messages