While rummaging through stuff at home. I came across my old Galaxy Note FE.
Being that it came out in July 2017. It's definitely an old phone now.
But it still works great.
All be it, it's very much slower than the Galaxy S25 Ultra I'm comparing it with.
The Note FE/ 7 was on the cutting edge of innovation at the time. With its Iris scanning biometrics etc.
Apart from the very different hardware appearances now between the old and new.
The Galaxy Note FE is still on the first iteration of One UI.
Thought it would be interesting to see the differences between the software of both phones.
I'm not going to go through it all, as it will be an endless post. So will be just a general look through.
The one thing I will say using the Note FE.
You can feel the original One UI in the new One UI 8 Beta. For all the new look and features, it still has that original One UI DNA feel to it.
So the Settings section is somewhat similar, but the S25 Ultra has more options and features listed.
Naturally with the smaller screen on the Note FE. Less is visable.
As you can see from the next couple of images. Things are not too dissimilar.
The one difference I do like are the display settings. Being that on the older phone has more options.
So you can go from very plain and more natural colours to very garish and over saturated colours that many complained about back then.
Somewhat humorously went the other way with the S24 Ultra phones.
Me personally, I prefer the natural colours. Just more pleasing to my eyes.
Now obviously there were no swipe gestures back in 2017.
It's amazing how used to swipe gestures I have become now. Using the physical home button and the recent and back controls, feels really old school now.
I keep trying to swipe back, which naturally doesn't work on the Note FE.
The app draw is still reasonably similar still. Though one thing I'm happy about is the search bar at the bottom now.
I know some don't like it. But I do prefer it on the One UI 8 Beta.
Though if i have to pick, aesthetically wise, the search bar is over dominant on the screen. But otherwise its a good change.
There's another thing I do miss, and have to say I prefer on the older One UI.
Notifications on the lockscreen.
Seeing the coloured notifications let's you know instantly what they are for.
Something that hopefully we may see again one day.
I don't mind the new ones, but it's good to see at a glance what there is.
There are some minor differences with the S Pen between the two.
Biggest I know seeing posts on this community is losing Smart Select and have AI Select now.
But otherwise the S Pen is still relatively similar.
Naturally with the growth of AI, it's brought a whole new dimension to the Galaxy range of phones.
Mind you Bixby was still quite useful on the old phone. But by far the biggest difference is the world of AI software that has brought a who new functionality to our humble devices.
Though Bixby is still there and still doing its bit on the phones but more functional now.
I like that we still have our animated lockscreens.
Still have out split screen multitasking which is much easier with the large screens we have now.
There was no Expert RAW or some of the new camera software we have now.
But I'd completely forgotten that we had some features like the one below.
By today's standards, the Galaxy Note FE is looking it's age and it's very slow in comparison.
But as a device of its day it was really amazing.
It came originally with the good old Touchwiz software before getting the One UI.
Touchwiz was very functional, all be it over burdened with so many features and settings. It used too slow the phones down and lag was very common.
But One UI came along. To be honest at first I didn't like it.
I felt taking settings and features away was not the best idea.
But Samsung had a vision for the future. What they did was lighten the UI and make it that much more user friendly.
Went from the very business like Note phones to something more enjoyable to use.
Better on battery life and gave the software more of a future vision.
I'm constantly impressed with my S25 Ultra. But it's great to still go back to experience where One UI started.
