Android manufacturers have begun embracing dark themes and designs recently. With folks doing their best to get dark modes and features on their phones, Google, Samsung, Xiaomi and others have finally got to work in an effort to deliver a dark UI to their lineup of devices.
Samsung, with the development of One UI, showed clear signs of Samsung’s presence listening to feedback. With OneUI, Samsung has played a ton lot with how their new design flows on their latest fleet of Galaxys. The one I have in particular is the Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus with me, showcasing the major leaps Samsung has implemented over the now-dated, TouchWiz UI. Apart from the new flashy hardware, I had been curious regarding how well Samsung’s new UI performs. Sure, I’ve seen a few teasers and tidbits along the way, but not a whole lot.
Apart from the new flashy hardware, I had been curious regarding how well Samsung’s new UI performs. Sure, I’ve seen a few teasers and tidbits along the way, but not a whole lot.
As soon as I unboxed the Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus and booted it up, decided to take the new dark mode or a spin. And since Samsung didn’t take the time to choose your theme while setting up the phone, I decided to search or “Dark” or “Black” in the settings menu, imagining that the “Dark Mode” option would pop up out of the horizon, quenching my thirst for the dark mode. Sadly, that wasn’t the case. However, after playing around with the device a bit and digging into the setting menu, I was pleased to finally came across the “Night Mode” toggle buried into the Display Settings menu.
After enabling it, I was curious to see how well Samsung implemented its dark mode for the Samsung Galaxy S10 lineup. I was delighted to find that the dark mode extended into the Messaging app, the Settings menu, the quick settings drawer, the Gallery app, the Clock app, and into essentially ever native Samsung app.
I’ve seen a number of “Dark Mode”(s) on devices over the past two years, and I’ll be honest, I absolutely hated them for being grey, rather than being completely back. Sure,
However, that isn’t to say that there is no room for improvements regarding the Dark mode. And while this is subjective, I would love other parts of the UI to be darker, if not black. A good example of this has to be the context menus, the subsections in the settings app and many others. There’s a ton of other ways to theme it even further. After all, the benefits of having an AMOLED display are incredible. Not only for the eye-candy but for battery longevity too. What made the experience even better was the fact that Samsung had included a toggle to bolden the system fonts in case it becomes harder to read.
There’s definitely some things Samsung could get even better. And I’d bet they’re on track to making things better with One UI. The question is, when?
