Samsung has started development of the One UI 9 update for the Galaxy S26 series, and we managed to get our hands on an early test firmware for the Galaxy S26 Ultra and took it for a spin.

Samsung still hasn't released the official One UI 8.5 update, so One UI 9 is obviously not coming anytime soon. Samsung is likely to launch the Galaxy Z Fold 8 and Galaxy Z Flip 8 (with One UI 9 preloaded) before bringing it to existing devices.

What's new in this early build of One UI 9? Well, not much. When it comes to visual changes, One UI 8.5 is already quite a massive update, so it's not surprising that Samsung isn't focusing on UI changes with One UI 9.

The only notable UI change we could see is that the volume and brightness sliders in the quick panel are now wider / bigger. Samsung has also made Parental Controls a separate entry in the Settings app – it is part of the Digital Wellbeing menu on One UI 8.5 and older versions.

Again, these are early days, so this particular firmware does not represent what the final version of One UI 9.0 will look like. In fact, it's so early that even the Android version is reported as Android 16 in some parts of the UI, not Android 17.

We'll continue to dig into this One UI 9 firmware and let you know if we find more changes, so stay tuned!