Samsung’s next One UI update appears to be adding extra flair to the lock screen media controls. A short clip posted to X by leaker Tarun Vats reveals an in-development animation in One UI 8.5 that plays when you skip forward or back from the lock screen, indicating another pass of polish on interactions you do every day.
What the new animation looks like on the lock screen
In the leaked build, tapping the skip buttons produces a full-bleed transition: large artwork fades and wipes to the next track. The effect’s apparent origin centers roughly around one or two points on the canvas, growing outward and producing a sweeping reveal likened to pulling back a sheet rather than a simple crossfade. It’s flashy, but the play is quick—under a second per skip—meaning it shouldn’t slow down rapid-fire track changes. Compared to the current lock screen play, it feels more theatrical, more of a piece with Samsung’s recent proclivity for lively, dynamic motion all around the interface. The sequence as shown is pre-release, and its timing, easing, even its design could still change before it appears on your phone.
Impact on user experience and perceived responsiveness
Media controls are the most touched elements on a modern phone, and tiny animation touches can contribute to perceived speed and polish. Google’s Material Design motion specifications suggest durations from 200 to 400ms for most UI animations, which are clear and still feel like part of the user action in that period. What Samsung seems to be experimenting with runs more toward the high end, which can seem very fancy but sometimes slower if input and animation aren’t well synchronized.
Top implementations sync motion, haptics, refresh rate, and audio feedback. I’d even venture so far as to say an expertly tuned sub-500ms transition with a nice vibration that appears on Galaxy 120Hz flagships can feel like it’s almost instantaneous in practice. Power users will notice if there’s even the slightest delay between a tap and the visual wipe. This is exactly what beta cycles are for: fine-tuning.
Performance and battery considerations for this change
Visually rich transitions can make you worry about GPU load and battery life, but such effects often aren’t so resource-hungry when they’re built around fast texture compositing and shader-based masks. On current Galaxies, it really should not matter as the animation is short and only starts on demand.
System-wide settings to minimize motion are available in Samsung devices as well. Accessibility preferences like “Remove animations” and power-saver modes usually reduce or turn off unnecessary effects. So you can expect this lock screen transition to respect those toggles, keeping the device as focused and uncluttered as possible for users who want both speed and utility.
How it compares to the competition from Apple and Google
Apple embraces album artwork while staying entirely on the lock screen of an iPhone, with a decent amount of depth, making the design feel austere yet still fully integrated. Google’s Pixel take is centered on color extraction and dynamic theming; whirling daubs, slime, and not the high-energy wipes. OnePlus and the Android skins do something similar but instead fade. The Samsung test animation is a compromise: more feisty than the restrained fades of the Android competitors, but more alive than Apple’s sobriety. If it makes it to a stable version, it would see One UI affirm its position as a skin with identity, the most artistically expressive in the US market.
When to expect it on Galaxy phones and in beta builds
The animation is bound to a pre-release One UI 8.5 build and will presumably appear in an imminent beta. Samsung’s beta trials usually begin with the most recent flagships — now it’s the Galaxy S24 series — and later incorporate last year’s S models and foldables before stable versions do. Testing features can be overhauled or eliminated depending on the feedback. If it ships, it’s the form of tweak users find straightaway because it meets them where they’re: their phone’s lock screen, playing playlists in a pensive Spotify across town or listening to podcasts on a tangy walk. A bunch of users day in and day out adds up to millions of seconds, which is where anything as simple as a lock-screen animation can have a breakout audience.
The One UI 8.5 leaked lock screen media animation is more evidence of Samsung trying to make the mundane feel premium. The design is slick, the duration seems manageable, and the concept certainly dovetails with the brand’s increasingly assured motion language. The real test will be responsiveness — nail the timing and haptics, and this could be a small but delightful upgrade that Galaxy owners can feel in their hands every day.