We’ve all been there before. An update gets announced for your favorite piece of electronics complete with a bunch of new features that sound really great. That is until the update finally arrives and it’s riddled with bugs that start to ruin your experience.
That’s exactly where I’ve been over the past few days since my Galaxy Z Fold 4 (opens in new tab) got the One UI 5 (opens in new tab) update. What was once a smooth, nearly perfect Android phone (opens in new tab) is now laggy, stuttery, and filled with lots of bugs. While most are just annoying, a few are starting to become pretty big problems. In my experience, most Samsung updates are quite smooth, so what I’ve seen thus far is pretty out of the ordinary.
Heading over to r/GalaxyFold (opens in new tab) on Reddit confirms that I’m not alone. Several users on Galaxy Z Fold 3’s and 4’s are having many of the same issues, although, it seems like I’m experiencing more than most.
I started to really notice it on January 23 when I finally decided to pose the question to my other co-workers with Samsung phones: “Does anybody notice performance issues on One UI 5?”
It was rather apparent when the phone stuttered and obviously dropped frames any time I pulled up the Overview window.
Several other users are also reporting that the app they tried to switch to wasn’t the app they clicked. One UI is either showing you the wrong app entirely or is having trouble properly keeping the carousel aligned. Something is gummed up in the works, in other words.
I haven’t experienced that but my multitasking experience in One UI 5 has been bad in other ways. The multitasking “hint” bar at the bottom, for instance, is supposed to let you quickly swipe between apps by sliding it to the left or right. Unfortunately, for me, this isn’t working properly at all.
Instead of switching between apps reliably — as was the case in One UI 4 — the screen rubber bands right back to the active app most of the time. Thankfully, it looks like Good Lock (opens in new tab) is to blame here. The Home Up module, specifically, appears to break the multitasking functionality almost entirely, as you can see in the video above.
Andrew Myrick noted that, while he didn’t notice the frame drops I was seeing, he did say that he’s been having network connectivity issues since the update. I, too, noticed that apps didn’t seem to be loading as quickly as before, particularly ones like Discord that have to load a chat stored on a server somewhere.
Further than that, several users have reported apps crashing when they switch back to them. I’ve actually had this happen so often with a few apps that the phone is now telling me to put them into deep sleep until the issue has been resolved.
Aside from general performance and stability issues, I’ve also noticed several UI glitches along those lines. One such instance messed up the taskbar app drawer at D&D last night, removing all but one or two letters from the names of each app. This one persisted after rotating and switching apps. Rebooting fixed it, thankfully, but I have no idea what triggered this particular bug.
Then, this morning, I received a call from my father and could barely understand what he was saying. Toggling Wi-Fi off (to quickly disable Wi-Fi calling) seemed to fix it but, later in the day, a call from Duke Energy quickly informed me that the bug had reared its ugly head again.
Just listen to this to hear what I mean.
Yeah, not exactly great for a device that’s still supposed to be a phone first and a smart, connected device second.
Many users on Reddit and Samsung’s own Members app are also reporting battery life issues with the update. I haven’t seen this on my own phone but don’t doubt they’re happening after my experiences here.
Everyone’s fix for it so far? Clear the system cache and, if that doesn’t work, factory reset. Even still, several users have stated that those catch-all “fixes” aren’t working for them.
At this point, I have no other choice but to live with the issues until Samsung is able to fix them. I’ve already tried the “clear system cache” trick and that didn’t seem to solve any of the problems. Quite frankly, I don’t feel like factory resetting, either. Until I get fed up enough to try it, I’ll just be using the official bug reporting tool in the Samsung Members app (opens in new tab) to make sure all these issues are being logged.
