Samsung's One UI 8.5 rolls out globally on May 11 — here's who gets it first
Samsung's One UI 8.5 stable update is live, bringing AI features that debuted on the Galaxy S26 to a wide range of older devices. The rollout started in South Korea on May 6, with a global wave — covering the US, UK, Europe, India, and Southeast Asia — beginning May 11. If you own a Galaxy S25, this update is likely already on its way to you.
The update
One UI 8.5 runs on Android 16 and carries four headline AI tools backported from the S26 lineup, per SamMobile. Call Screening uses on-device AI to auto-answer unknown calls and transcribe them in real time — useful for filtering spam without picking up. Advanced Audio Eraser now works during third-party app playback on Netflix, Instagram, and YouTube, not just in the camera app. Creative Studio adds AI-assisted image editing, and Photo Assist gets a round of improvements. The stable build follows a roughly six-month beta cycle, and Samsung official confirms no major bugs made it to the final release.
Who gets it and when
The first wave covers devices from 2024 onward: the full Galaxy S25 series (S25, S25+, S25 Ultra, S25 Edge, S25 FE), the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Z Flip 7, last year's Z Fold 6 and Z Flip 6, the Galaxy S24 series, and Galaxy Tab S11 and Tab S10 tablets. All of these get the complete One UI 8.5 feature set, including the S26 AI tools.
Older flagships — including the S22 and S23 lines — are pushed to a second phase with no confirmed date yet. Galaxy A-series phones from the last three years (think A56, A55, A36) are eligible for a subset of AI features called Awesome Intelligence, but also fall into later rollout phases.
How to check for the update
Go to Settings → Software update → Download and install. If you took part in the beta program, the download will be small. Coming from One UI 8.0 on a non-beta device, clear a few gigabytes of storage first — the package is several GB in size.
The two-day gap between Samsung's home market and the rest of the world is unusually short, which suggests the company is confident in the build's stability after months of testing.