One UI 8 brings smart UI upgrades to Galaxy tablets

Samsung’s One UI 8 is rolling out to select Galaxy tablets, starting with the Galaxy Tab S10 Plus. The changes are all about the experience of using apps on a large screen feeling more carefully crafted. It’s not a headline-grabbing redesign, then, but the tweaks to core applications show a firm that is regularly tightening the screws on tablet usability.

Smarter layouts for big screens emphasize side panes

One UI has always favored split panes and sidebars—One UI 8 just pushes that further. The various aspects of the Clock app are spread across sidebars, with the previously bunched set of alarms, world clock, stopwatch, and timer now in a vertical sidebar, not tucked behind a bottom bar. It plays to large screens’ strengths; on a 10-inch or greater display in landscape, the result is less lateral real estate is wasted, and thumb travel is shortened. This is, after all, what Google’s large-screen design guidance has always said: landscape-first devices should use side rails and responsive panes, not bottom bars, and the outcome here results in more content above the fold, better layout weighting, and a visual metaphor which Samsung already applies to utilities like Settings, Gallery, and Notes.

Calendar gains a flexible agenda pane for month view

There are bigger changes in the Calendar app. When in Month view, tapping on an event trims out an agenda pane to the right, showing your day’s details while still holding the month grid open at the top. If you pin an event to the top of the pane, you swipe horizontally in it to switch between days; if you pinch-zoom the pane, it sizes up and down, letting you compress and decompress a full-day schedule to fit your plans.

In practice, this eliminates that rapid context switching which afflicts many a tablet calendar. Rather than hopping in and out of full-screen detail views, you skim a month of information and drill into the timeline on any given day, side-by-side. It may sound small, but these microinteractions are what make a tablet feel like a work device instead of just an oversized phone.

Skeuomorphic consistency across Samsung’s core apps

Beyond individual apps, One UI 8 tightens consistency across Samsung’s first-party suite. Clock’s side pane mirrors the split-pane scaffolding in Mail, Files, and Notes, so that navigation feels predictable regardless of which app you’re searching. Which brings me to predictability, and how that plays on bigger screens: fewer surprises in layouts translate to fewer taps, less time spent “relearning” an interface.

And it dovetails with Samsung’s multitasking capabilities as well. Once you’re in split view or dealing with pop-up windows, apps that segment content and controls into separate panes are easy to rearrange and resize. When you time a recipe while glancing at a meeting agenda or review lecture recordings with the month grid, the interfaces now bend more elegantly.

Why these tweaks matter for everyday Galaxy tablet use

“Samsung is the leading Android tablet manufacturer and use of their tablets in landscape mode with keyboards or stands can be found throughout Google,” she wrote. According to the industry analyst firm IDC, Samsung maintains a run rate equivalent to 1/5 of all tablets shipped globally, so these adjustments are significant. Small gains — faster access to alarms, more efficient scheduling — add up for millions of users.

These same benefits apply to foldables in tablet mode as well. The same side-pane layouts that leap off a Tab S series slab adapt neatly for more expansive inner displays on foldable phones, blurring the lines between categories. Uniformity is an advantage here, particularly since many Android apps embrace responsive layouts with design principles inspired by … wait for it, Material Design.

A real-world Galaxy Tab example of One UI 8 in action

For example, take a Galaxy Tab user mapping out a jam-packed week. With One UI 8, they can park the Calendar month grid on the left, flick through the right pane of an agenda view, and easily see gaps for adding a meeting. A long-press to create an event, a swift cross-check in the Clock app’s world time pane to see if that overseas teammate might be online now and bingo, it’s scheduled without the carousel ride of screen-sized views between plan A and plan B.

That kind of fluidity — the ability to maintain context even as one fiddles with details — is exactly what well-designed software for large screens should provide. One UI 8 isn’t a dramatic departure from Samsung’s tablet experience, but it shaves off friction in ways that you’ll notice every day.

Update availability and how to check on your device

One UI 8 will slowly be released to eligible Galaxy tablets over the coming weeks, with timing and availability subject to region and device. Users can see if the update is available by going to Settings, choosing Software update, and clicking Download and install. And, as usual with staged rollouts, some devices will get it before others.

If this release is any indication, Samsung’s tablet roadmap has been less about flash and more about fit and finish. For those who live with a Galaxy tablet on their desk, that’s exactly the right priority.