Samsung starts rolling out One UI 3.1.1 update for its older foldables, here's what's new
All of Samsung’s older foldables are ready to join their 2021 counterparts in running One UI 3.1.1. The update for the Galaxy Z Fold2 5G, Z Flip 5G and the original Z Flip starts rolling out today. The original Galaxy Fold will get its update about a week later.
What’s new in 3.1.1? Samsung worked to figure out new ways to use the large screen of the foldables. Note that some of these features are available only on select models.
Drag & Split is an alternative to tabs – you can drag a link or item from select apps to the side of the screen and open a new window side by side. The list of supported apps currently includes the Samsung Internet browser, Samsung Notes, My Files, Messages, MS Office, OneNote, OneDrive and others.
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Multi-active window can keep up to three apps running simultaneously on the screen on the Folds and you can adjust their size and layout as you see fit. Natural window switching uses a better animation when re-arranging windows. Here’s a side-by-side comparison of how 3.1.0 and 3.1.1 works.
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Samsung also enabled rotation for all apps, even the ones that don’t support it themselves. This allows you to fit them better to how you are using your foldable phone.
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Some older apps are also locked to certain aspect ratios that don"t fit the foldables well. The update lets you set the aspect ratio per app. You can enable this in Labs and set the app to one of four modes: Full screen, 16:9, 4:3 and App default.
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Select apps support split view, which is a desktop/tablet-like interface that puts some UI elements on the side (e.g. the list of received emails) and more content on the other side (e.g. the content of the email). This can also be enabled in Labs for apps that don’t natively support split view.
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With the 3.1.1 update you can also enable Flex mode panel for apps that don’t already support it. This puts additional controls on half of the screen, leaving the other half for multimedia.
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The larger screen on the Galaxy Z Folds can also accommodate a taskbar for quickly launching your most-frequently used apps. And not only launching, but also quickly switching between them with a single tap.
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Also for the folds is the Cover screen mirroring option, which saves you the trouble of managing and organizing two separate homescreens. Instead, the cover screen shortcuts and widgets are mirrored on the internal screen.
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