Galaxy S21 Gets Android 13 and One UI 5 in the US

The steady stream of Android 13 updates to Samsung’s best phones continues this week in the US with the Galaxy S21 series seeing the love. The update, which includes One UI 5, is hitting both Verizon and T-Mobile lines as you read this.

This fresh update to Android 13 and One UI 5 is a solid upgrade if you own a Galaxy S21, Galaxy S21+, or Galaxy S21 Ultra. Like the Galaxy S22 and Galaxy Note 20 before them, you’ll find new stackable widgets as well as a “fresh, new look and feel” that adds simpler app icons, Emoji pairs deletion, new lock screen editing, refined notifications, and a new pop-up call display. There is a convenient way to extract text from images, Routines to trigger a sequence of actions based on activities, Gallery app improvements, new security and privacy dashboard, video wallpapers, integrated filters in the camera, and more.

This is probably more of an incremental update than anything, but that’s likely because the update to Android 12 was so huge (and difficult). Android 13 feels like Android 12 in stable format with some added bonuses. This is not me complaining, by the way.

The new builds are as follows:

• Galaxy S21 Ultra: TP1A.220624.014.G998USQU5DVK3
• Galaxy S21+: TP1A.220624.014.G996USQU5DVK3
• Galaxy S21: TP1A.220624.014.G991USQU5DVK3

For Verizon owners, the update is arriving today. We’ve already had a couple of readers ping us with word of the update being live. For T-Mobile owners, you should be able to pull the update immediately, since it began rolling out earlier in the week.

To check for the update, head into Settings>System updates>Check for system updates.

// Verizon

Cheers Brett and John!