Samsung Begins One UI 8.5 Stable Rollout to Galaxy S25 Series in South Korea — Global Release Set for May 4, 2026 (April 30, 2026)

Samsung began rolling out the stable build of One UI 8.5 to Galaxy S25, S25+, S25 Ultra and S25 Edge owners in South Korea on April 30, 2026, ending a roughly nine-week beta program and setting the stage for a global rollout that begins May 4 and runs through the end of May for most of the eligible Galaxy lineup.

What Happened

Samsung confirmed the April 30 kickoff to Samsung Members earlier this week, after roughly nine months of internal testing and nine consecutive Galaxy S25 betas dating back to early March 2026. The build is based on Android 16 QPR2 and is identified as firmware string S93xNKSU2BYDX in the leaked changelog. It first hit S25, S25+, S25 Ultra and S25 Edge units in South Korea over-the-air on the morning of April 30, with Samsung's regional rollout planner showing the United States, Europe, and most international markets receiving the same build starting May 4, 2026.

Key Details

• Ambient Design: A system-wide blur-based visual refresh — transparent layers, floating UI cards, and reactive animations that shift as you interact. It is the biggest aesthetic change to One UI since the 2.0 redesign in 2019.
• Quick Share to AirDrop: One UI 8.5 finally introduces interoperability with Apple's AirDrop, letting Galaxy S25 owners send and receive files to and from iPhones, iPads and Macs over the same Quick Share UI used for Galaxy-to-Galaxy transfers.
• Perplexity-powered Bixby: Bixby gets a new conversational layer powered by Perplexity's answer engine, alongside Bixby Text Call — a call screening agent that can answer incoming calls, ask the caller who they are, and present the response to the user before they pick up.
• Creative Studio: A new app-drawer shortcut to Samsung's on-device generative tools for synthesizing custom wallpapers, stickers, and lock-screen art from natural-language prompts.
• Photo Assist with Object Transfer: The AI image editor can now copy objects from one photo into another and re-color clothing or fill empty surfaces from a text description.
• Audio Eraser for third-party apps: Real-time background-noise removal in any app that uses the system microphone, including TikTok, WhatsApp, and Discord.
• Eligible devices: The eligible-device list is unusually broad for a point-five release, covering Galaxy S25 / S24 / S23 / S22 series, Z Fold 7 / Flip 7 / Fold 6 / Flip 6 / Fold 5 / Flip 5, and most current Galaxy A, M, and F mid-range models. International stable rollout is staggered between May 4 and May 30, 2026.

What Galaxy Owners Are Saying

Reaction in the Samsung Members forum and on r/GalaxyS25 has been broadly positive but cautious. The most upvoted threads on Reddit praise the AirDrop-style Quick Share interoperability — long the single biggest gap between Galaxy and iPhone households — and the Ambient Design refresh, which testers describe as the cleanest One UI redesign in years. Recurring complaints from the late-stage beta concern background battery drain on the S25 base model and a small handful of regressions in third-party launchers. Several international users on SamMobile and Sammy Fans expressed frustration that the global rollout slipped from the originally rumoured April 30 date for non-Korean markets to May 4 — a delay Samsung has not officially explained.

What This Means for Galaxy Owners

Galaxy S25 owners outside South Korea should expect the OTA notification within the first week of May, with the rest of the supported lineup landing through May 30. Owners should ensure they are on the latest stable One UI 8.0 build before the update appears, since Samsung is using 8.5 as a wider Android 16 delivery vehicle and the differential package is roughly 3.5–4.2 GB depending on device and region. The update is non-reversible — once installed, the bootloader counter is incremented, and downgrading to One UI 8.0 will require a Samsung service-center re-flash.

What's Next

Samsung's published rollout planner shows Galaxy S24 series receiving stable One UI 8.5 starting May 11, S23 series and Z Fold/Flip 6 starting May 18, and the bulk of Galaxy A, M, and F devices arriving by May 30. The first One UI 8.5 maintenance build (likely focused on the third-party launcher regressions noted in late beta) is tentatively scheduled for early June, alongside Samsung's June 2026 security patch.

Sources

• Samsung Members Community — official Samsung confirmation thread for the April 30 kickoff.
• Samsung Global Newsroom — official press release on the One UI 8.5 beta program and AirDrop-compatible Quick Share.
• SamMobile — leaked Galaxy S25 changelog ahead of stable rollout.
• 9to5Google — independent coverage of the AirDrop-compatible Quick Share feature.
• Android Authority — analysis of the leaked changelog and rollout timeline.
• GizChina — full eligible-device list and regional rollout schedule.