One of the headlining new features of the Galaxy S25 series is Sports Scores on the Now bar, making it easy to keep up with all your favorite teams . This functionality is handled by the Google app. But this feature, along with the Gemini Live chat, does not work on other One UI 7 devices, including the 2024 flagship S24 series, the Z Fold 6, and Z Flip 6.
Why aren’t Sports Scores appearing on older devices?
To understand why these features don’t work, we first need to get technical, so pardon my jargon.
First, let’s compare the two different versions of the Always On Display (AOD) system app. The newly released version for the S25 series, which contains the Google integration has the version number 8.8.25.5, whereas all other One UI 7 equipped devices are running 8.8.27.5 (screenshot below from Z Fold 6 One UI 7 beta), which does not have said integration. When the version number is higher, you cannot side-load the update either. Even if you could, Samsung is enforcing heavier restrictions on side-loading system apps with One UI 7, presenting a buildtype-3001 error when attempting to install.
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- Always On Display version 8.8.27.5
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- Always On Display version 8.8.27.5
Also, the Gemini shortcut by long pressing the power button remains an S25 series exclusive. Luckily, the RegiStar Good Lock module bypasses this on any device, even those on older One UI versions. No such luck for Google Sports on the NowBar.
Another thing to note, X user @tim_tom_0 discovered that Samsung has hardcoded a whitelist for apps that support Live Activities. A root-level config file hides this, making it inaccessible to end users. On the S24 beta, the package name for the Google app, com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox, does not appear on this list.
Did Samsung deliberately lock Google ap features to the S25 series?
As things stand at the moment, Samsung has indeed locked all Google live notification activities the the S25 line-up. There is no official confirmation as of writing, although we have reached out for comment. Unlike the Now Brief limitation that was discovered, this feature requires no AI background work. It just takes the sports notifications the Google app already posts, and presents its data as a live notification. This is purely an artificial limitation designed to give the S25 series an exclusive feature to advertise. Do keep in mind that there is a possibility that this could be added in with the stable release of One UI 7. We will keep you updated if and when this feature rolls out to other Galaxy devices.
