Samsung has been panned for the fact it’s taking a long time to bring Android 15 to its smartphones. The company seems to be hard at work ensuring that doesn’t happen again for the next major Android update, though.

After a period of inconsistency that saw delays in the rollout of One UI 7, Samsung has reportedly begun internal testing of its next major third-party skin, One UI 8, based on the upcoming Android 16. The news comes via a post on Twitter/X by industry insider Tarun Vats, who reported that Samsung has started up internal testing of One UI 8 and already has internal builds of what will eventually become Samsung’s next major software update in a few months. These tests are not public-facing, so if you’re rushing over to Google to check if you can install Android 16 on your Galaxy S25, you can’t. These are just the company’s initial efforts to start the bring-up process for the next generation of Android.

As a reminder, Android 16 is already in its second beta, and it’s already taking shape—it’s expected to be out of the door and into users’ phones in a relatively short period of time. This is approximately two months ahead of schedule compared to when Samsung began bring-up for Android 15 last year. This timing also mirrors the early testing phase seen with One UI 6, which was notably the last major update to adhere to Samsung’s previously consistent timeline. If it seems too early, just remember that Android 16 itself is headed for an early release compared to previous Android versions—the first Android 16 developer preview was released last year, mere weeks after the release of the stable version of Android 15. So seeing companies start laying the groundwork for their own Android 16 updates around this time is probably right on schedule.

While the flagship Galaxy S25 series is running the full version of One UI 7, Samsung’s take on Android 15, other devices haven’t had it as good. The Galaxy S24 lineup has been undergoing beta testing since last year, and the latest foldable devices, the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Flip 6, are due to get enrolled to the beta program as well soon.

Samsung had obtained a reputation of rolling out updates relatively fast over the past few years—I had a Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra until not too long ago and I always got my major updates just weeks after they were released on Pixel phones. So the fact that this rollout has been so chaotic is pretty out of character for Samsung recently. Samsung clearly doesn’t want the same thing to happen with its next Android 16 release, so it’s starting to do things right by starting the harder part of the work earlier than usual.

We’re not sure when this will translate into builds that users can actually use—as we said before, these are just internal builds that are probably pretty broken, so it’s gonna take some time until it becomes something usable by actual people. If we’re starting out this early, though, there’s a chance we’ll at least see beta releases starting with the initial rollout of Android 16 to Pixel phones and the AOSP. Again, it’s too early to tell—Samsung might still mess up sometime over the next few weeks resulting in yet another delayed release.

Source: Tarun Vats (Twitter/X) via 9to5Google