Review – Samsung Galaxy A35 got Android 16 and One UI 8

[peq42]

A bit over a year ago I bought a Samsung Galaxy A35 for myself. I was looking for something cheap, with good camera and battery as honestly I don’t do much with my phone other than take photos, browse the internet and watch youtube(on Brave Browser, because google doesn’t deserve that ad money).

Today, I finally got an update for it: From the original android 14 and One UI 6.1(which I had updated a while back to 15 and One UI 7) to android 16 and One UI 8. And in my opinion? It barely changed.

Now the phone is great for what I wanted it for: Camera is awesome, the phone is fast, battery lasts about 2-3 days with my use, storage is also good enough(128GB) and of course 5G and great wifi speed.

Android itself almost didnt change with version 16, as per usual. Google barely cares to do any improvements under the hood for extra performance/battery life, as most main mobile users seem to be brain dead since 2015 anyway(4k resolution on a phone screen? Ray Tracing on mid-range phones? NPUs when AI models are all online anyway? 10+ cores to run what? Clash Royale?Who tf has a 10Gbps wifi? etc) so most of the changes were visual or them shoving A.I. in places nobody cares to justify all their investment. And the visual changes don’t matter here because samsung phones have One UI.

Needless to say I turn A.I. off everywhere I can.

As for One UI 8: On my phone, it looks exactly the same. Other than the search bar in the apps menu changing from top to the bottom, the design didn’t change. Samsung says there was a “performance optimizations” and “new privacy settings” but while I haven’t had enough time testing to notice the first, I couldn’t find *any* new settings for privacy so… seems to be a lie?

Overall, disappointing and only recommended because updates normally bring new virus definitions and whatnot which keep the device safe. If performance and battery life disappoint, I’ll move to some other android “distribution”

[Author]

Posts