Samsung continues to chug along with new beta releases forOne UI 6, its version of Android that’s based on this year’sAndroid 14release. While it remains uncertain when the next Android iteration will make its debut, the South Korean tech giant justrolled out the third One UI 6 beta, bringing it closer to a stable release. As usual, the latest beta includes bug fixes and stability improvements addressing the issues with the previous one, but One UI 6 beta 3 also sneaked in a handy tweak to Android 14’s built-in media player.
With the latest beta, the media player widget in the notification panel and lock screen remembers how you left it, so it will open expanded if you left it that way, or collapsed otherwise. X (Twitter) user Tarun Vats shared a video showing this new behavior in action (viaSamMobile).
As is always the case, when you tap the arrow-down button in the media player, it will expand and display more playback options for the currently playing media. Prior to this update, however, the media player would return to its collapsed state after returning to the home screen or locking the phone. But now, the media player remembers its last state even after you reboot your phone.
This behavior is a nice touch to Android 14’s media player on top of its nifty animated scrubber that seemingly takes a page out of thePixel phones' squiggly media player notification. These experiences should be live if you own any of thelatest and greatest Samsung phonesand happen to live in the U.S., South Korea, the UK, Germany, Poland, and India.
The third beta also includes the September 2023 patch, whereas Google still hasn’t released the same security update for Pixel phones outside the Android 14 beta program. While Google appears to be late on that front, it’s important to remember that the company has stopped releasing patches on the first Monday of every month since April. A Google product expertconfirmeda few days ago that, while patches are still released once a month, no specific release date is now guaranteed.
Speaking of delays, Mishaal Rahman revealed last week thatAndroid 14’s release date had been pushed back to October 4, which is the expected launch date for thePixel 8 series. If this is accurate, Samsung could wrap up the One UI 6 beta program and launch Android 14 on the stable channel before Google does.
However, Google is reportedly working behind the scenes onextending software support for the Pixel 8beyond what Samsung promises. This could mean that Google’s next flagship series could get iPhone-like software treatment, meaning new OS updates for several years after launch.
