Samsung wants One UI to rule them all

Samsung made a handful of announcements at the 2024 edition of its developer conference, and among the key news from the Korean tech giant is that it plans to unify the naming for the software across its consumer product lineup.

Samsung currently uses a variety of names for the software that powers its consumer products. Mobile phones and tablets run on One UI while its Galaxy smartwatches like the Galaxy Watch FE (available on Amazon for $199) run One UI Watch. On the other hand, its smart TVs and smart refrigerators run Tizen OS. However, Samsung has revealed that it plans to extend One UI beyond mobile devices, to make it the software experience for all its consumer products.

What this means is that the software powering products such as its smart TVs and refrigerators and other appliances will be called One UI. It is therefore safe to say Samsung will be sunsetting the Tizen OS name which it first unveiled in 2012. Samsung says the unification will happen in 2025.

Samsung choosing to go with a single name for the software across all of its products is similar to what some other manufacturers already do. Huawei, for example, uses HarmonyOS for not only its smartphones, smartwatches, and tablets but also its TVs, cars, and IoT devices. Xiaomi also uses the HyperOS name for the software powering its mobile devices, cars, and smart home products.

However, save for the name and probably similarities in design, the underlying software is usually different between platforms, and that will likely be the case with One UI across multiple platforms.