Samsung has announced a key change to its One UI beta program. With the release of the One UI 7 beta for the Galaxy A55, the company has mandated a Wi-Fi connection for downloading the update. There was no such requirement for other devices, leaving A55 users wondering why they couldn’t use mobile data to download the beta software.
Samsung introduces a new rule for One UI 7 beta installations
The official notice announcing the One UI 7 beta program for the Galaxy A55 in South Korea states that users must download the update over a Wi-Fi connection. “Starting this year, you can only download the Beta version in a Wi-Fi environment,” the notice reads (machine-translated from Korean). The Galaxy A55 is the first to have this limitation. The Galaxy S24 and other models allowed the downloading of the beta software using mobile data.
With this limitation, users with no access to Wi-Fi (or mobile hotspot) cannot download beta software. It’s unclear if this only applies to the initial beta release or all subsequent beta updates. Hopefully, Samsung won’t force Galaxy users to use a Wi-Fi connection for stable One UI updates.
Could it be due to seamless updates?
The Galaxy A55 is the first Samsung smartphone to support Android’s seamless updates. This feature allows system updates to install in the secondary partition in the background without interrupting the user. Maybe Samsung wants to avoid potential errors by forcing users to use Wi-Fi, which typically offers a more stable and reliable connection than mobile data.
In that case, we could see similar requirements for One UI beta updates for the Galaxy S25 series in the future. The latest flagships support seamless updates — the only phones to have this Android feature after the Galaxy A55. Hopefully, Samsung will clarify the situation so users know what’s going on. As of this writing, it hasn’t explained why A55 users must download the One UI 7 beta update using Wi-Fi.
