Samsung under fire for leaving the best One UI 8.5 feature out of the Galaxy S23 series

It took some time, but Galaxy S23 owners finally started getting the stable version of One UI 8.5 about a week ago. Among the improvements they may have expected to get was one of the best new Android features, but it turned out they were left out.

Galaxy S23 owners are unhappy for not getting AirDrop support

It appears that Samsung has kept the Galaxy S23 devices off the list of AirDrop-compatible phones. Many users have complained about the feature missing from their devices after updating to One UI 8.5.A Galaxy S23 Ultra owner complained that the software update felt just like a reskin in a Reddit post, and a Galaxy S23 Plus owner said their day was ruined because of the feature missing from the update. One Reddit user took things even further, saying that was part of a planned obsolescence strategy by Samsung.

Many brands get accused of using planned obsolescence tactics, which describe an intentional limitation of features and performance on devices that would otherwise continue working well. Allegedly, the goal is to push users into upgrading their devices to get access to the new features.

Could the Galaxy S23 support AirDrop over Quick Share?

One redditor took a deep dive into the feature, saying that the Galaxy S23 is technically capable of supporting AirDrop. Redditor u/Big-Salary9046 points out that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset features Qualcomm’s FastConnect 7800 system, which is capable of Wi-Fi 7 connectivity and supports Multi-Link operation, visible from the chip’s official product brief.

Where the redditor makes a leap that’s impossible to confirm is claiming that the chip is capable of handling the Apple Wireless Direct Link (AWDL) protocol. That’s the technology powering AirDrop, which requires the Wi-Fi radio to slice the transfer into small packets and switch channels rapidly so it can keep the transfer active while remaining connected to the internet.

Because of the way AWDL functions, an older and less capable Wi-Fi module could turn into a bottleneck that makes the feature unusable or impractical to even try to implement.

Unlikely to change

Regardless of the technical capabilities, Samsung and Google would need to invest time and resources to optimize the feature for the Galaxy S23 devices. That’s unlikely to happen, as the list of supported Galaxy devices has never featured devices older than the Galaxy S24 series.

User outrage may be justified because the Galaxy S23 series still has one year of major software updates left. Coming with a promise of four major Android updates but not offering several of the key features of those updates is not surprising, but it’s certainly disappointing.

Three years is still a long time for smartphones

The times when changing your smartphone every year not only made sense but was almost mandatory are long gone. Still, owning a three-year-old smartphone inevitably leaves some of the latest features out of your reach, and that’s not a surprise.

I’d love for my aging flagship to have feature parity with the latest phones for as long as possible, but I also prefer them to not get updates that won’t work well. If a feature is going to make my phone slower or just not work well, it’s better for it to stay out of reach.

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