Samsung isn't burning the midnight oil to finish development of the One UI 8 (Android 16) update solely for flagship smartphones. Even mid-range phones could get it much sooner than they got One UI 7, as evidenced by the appearance of an early One UI 8 firmware for the Galaxy A56 on the company's servers.

The Galaxy A56 is eligible for six major OS upgrades, and One UI 8 will be the first of them. According to Google, the stable version of One UI will start rolling out sometime in the US' summer months (June-August), though it remains to be seen if that timeline will apply to both flagship and mid-range devices.

Either way, one thing is for sure: most eligible devices will most likely be running One UI 8 before the end of this year. And after the massive delay in One UI 7's release, this is something Samsung fans will appreciate. We can also expect faster releases of future One UI updates, as Samsung is working with Google to expedite the process of adapting the One UI interface to Android.

Will the Galaxy A56 get a beta version of One UI 8 before the stable release? We don't think so. Samsung has only launched the One UI 8 beta program for the Galaxy S25 series at the time of writing, and if it intends to make the summer release window, it will probably have to keep the beta program limited to avoid delays.

We'll let you know as soon as we learn more about the Galaxy A56 and its One UI 8 update, so stay tuned!