We’ve all been in Samsung’s position, promising something before quickly realizing we couldn’t, or didn’t want to, actually follow through. But the Korean giant might get a record for the speed at which it walked back its initial pledge. It had intended to give Galaxy S23 owners the chance to beta test several One UI 6 features ahead of launch. Users in the US, Germany and South Korea would be able to see what tweaks the company had added to Android 14 and see what worked, and what didn’t.
Or that was the plan. Not long after the news dropped, Samsung began to walk back its promise. It told Engadget (and the rest of the media) it would delay the launch of the beta test until further notice, but with no justification. The initial announcement disappeared from Samsung’s press site, and everyone’s left mulling what could have been so problematic as to require this sort of scorched-earth approach.
—Dan Cooper