From the onset, OneUI7 looks great, and I'm glad Samsung is taking a bit of a bolder approach to the overall design of their UI. I still would like to see a day where Samsung produces its own OS and not optimise Android for Samsung. Grab your coffee. This is going to be an essay. (I just hope this presents the way i've structured it😭). Let's chat.
- Clearing the cache partition really boosted performance. It was my first time doing this, and I'm taking aback by the difference in performance. Everything feels smoother and faster * chef's kisses* In fact, the phones feels "brand new", and I dare say I even feel like the screen resolution has been kicked up a notch.🤣
- Vertical app screen is going to take some getting used to because muscle memory forces me to swipe as opposed to scrolling, and the search bar being at the bottom can be a little jaring, but it's not a big deal.
- We have goodlock. That will never not be a plus in my books and like the fact that we more out-of-the-box customization features as opposed to relying third party apps. But yes, we love goodlock.
- I love the changes to the Quick settings and notifications panel. It was getting chaotic there. Being able to separate the two works me.
- I haven't delved into the AI features yet, but I will get to that at some stage (I hope).
- We love the Now Bar, but also check under 'CONCERNS' below
- Lock Screen widgets: I don't know how much goes into widgets, but I would've appreciated a face-lift there as well. Secondly, I would've loved to be able to play around with the size of the widgets under my clock, it's colour, and possibly the widget's respective backgrounds - either change the color or completely transparent.That being said. I love the ability to blur my whole wallpaper. It gives a "focus" feel to everything on my Lock screen and Homescreen.
- Home Screen set up: I must note that with my issues here, maybe goodlock will have the solution to them, but we'll see. I did not have a good time setting up my home screen. And here's why:
- Folders: Having the ability to create folders on my homescreen is great, but I feel like Samsung didn't hit a home-run here. From trying to arrange folders using the DIYHOME feature, working around folder sizes, trying to see if I can stack apps so that I have a more compact presentation of the folder, and when I expand the folder, I can then see a full view of the apps contained in it. (I hope I'm explaining this properly). See screenshots below:
As you can see here, Folder Widget gives me more flexibility in terms of the folder shape, stacking and presentation of apps compared to the One UI7 folders. I have the ability to expand this Folder Widget folder (that's more stacked and compact) so that I can access the rest of the apps in there. The ones you can immediately see are my usual go-to apps for entertainment. I would have appreciated that freedom from Samsung as opposed to a third party app.
For those of us who don't want apps sitting haphazardly on the home screen,can we get gridlines when using the DIYHOME feature. I wanted to cry when I was trying straighten everything😭😭
- Homescreen widgets: I don't know if it's me, but I think there's a problem here. I was battling, particularly with the Weather and Device care widgets. They seem pretty scrunched up, despite trying to enlarge them with the hopes of giving them more room on the homescreen. I was losing this war.
With the Weather widget, the sun is cut off. Has it always been like this? I don't think so. The device care widget is simply not responding to anything I do it. I don't know if this is what happens with all the widgets, but these were the one I encountered so far. If you have solutions, please help me out.
- NOW BAR * evil laugh * - I love the concept, but I'm not happy with just being limited to the apps intergrated into the Now Bar.🤔 Right now, based on the little that I know abou it, the Now Bar's only function on my phone is for Music.
- I would have loved having the option to play around with it's functionality i.e. for it to function as a task manager of some sort when the phone is unlocked, in that you either use Goodlock's task manager function or the Now Bar offers you miniature views of open tasks/screens that you flip through to get to what you want.
- If the phone is locked and you're on your Lock screen, you can either have the notifications presented to you on your screen or you they can be integrated into the Now Bar as an added fucntionality, like a notifications centre that you can select and you're presented with an interactive pop-up window to view of your notifications. I feel like there's so much that can be done with Now Bar, and we are kind of playing it safe.
That's it for now. Thank you for coming to my ted talk.🤣
