One UI 8.5 Beta 9 Reaches US Galaxy S25 Units, Adds AirDrop and Camera Filters

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Last week, Samsung rolled out the ninth One UI 8.5 Beta for the Galaxy S25 series, but US participants were notably left out of the initial release. After a short delay, the update is finally making its way stateside, bringing AirDrop support for file sharing along with a host of bug fixes and stability improvements. The S25 lineup is expected to receive one more beta build before the stable update.

Galaxy S25’s ninth One UI 8.5 Beta update reaches US users

Galaxy S25, S25+, and S25 Ultra users in the US who enrolled their devices in Samsung’s One UI 8.5 Beta Program are getting Beta 9 with firmware build version ZZD5. The update weighs over 800MB (exact size varies by model and region) and brings a few new features.

Most notably, the Galaxy S25 lineup now supports AirDrop file sharing with iPhones via Quick Share. It’s a small but meaningful step toward making Galaxy devices more flexible in mixed-device environments. Samsung introduced this feature with the Galaxy S26 series and is now pushing it to older models.

This beta update also adds three new camera filters — Classic Film, Pop Film, and Blanc — to the Galaxy S25 series. Once again, these filters first arrived on the S26 lineup, which runs One UI 8.5 out of the box. They give users more creative options straight from the camera app without needing third-party tools.

Much of the update, however, is about fixing issues and improving reliability. Samsung has addressed bugs affecting the Bluetooth performance, notification cards, camera stability, Gallery app, always-on display (AOD) clock, lock screen, and other system elements.

Overall, this release pushes the system toward full stability. Rumors suggest Samsung will release One UI 8.5 Beta 10 for the Galaxy S25 series in the coming weeks and then push the stable build at the end of this month. A wider stable rollout for non-beta units may begin in the first week of May.

Written by

Sumit Adhikari

Sumit, a life-long Samsung user, is passionate about technology and has been professionally writing on tech since 2017. He’s a mathematics graduate by education and enjoys teaching basic mathematics tricks to school kids in his spare time. Sumit believes in artificial intelligence and dreams of a fully open, intelligent and connected world.

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