Matisyahu's Blog

i finished work tonight and then went for a walk but had a short walk because it started spitting – last night I got stuck in the rain so I wanted to avoid that same issue. Long story short on my way home I picked up a few things from the local convenience store and while waiting I decided to check for software updates and the One UI 8 was made available – around a 4.2GB download. I walked home and started the download:

I’ve got a pretty good internet connection at home so it downloaded pretty quickly. My phone rebooted and I checked for updates – both the Play Store and the Galaxy store had updates where I then installed those. Everything so far has been very smooth and reliable with the kernel updated to 6.6.77 (compiled on 3 September) along with the modem firmware updated and the security patch level updated to September 2025 (I’m still waiting on the Google Play system update for September 2025 to be made available).

One thing I have noticed is that the NFC is working a lot better with my Snapper card – before it was really temperamental but I tried it just then and it scanned my card a lot faster and on the first try. I’m unsure what Samsung has done with their NFC driver or the implementation that came with Android 16 but it is working a whole lot more reliable. I haven’t tested whether there has been a change in the wifi connectivity, bluetooth or cell phone connectivity. I’ll keep an eye on things and report back my findings if I notice any issues. Battery life will be one thing I’ll keep an eye on my I haven’t heard anything negative so I expect that things will be pretty normal.