Apple, Новости

Apple’s iOS 26 vs Google’s Android 16 vs Samsung’s One UI 7: Mega visual comparison

Назик Абдрахманов

12 июня, 2025

Lock Screen & Customization

The iOS 26 lock screen is characterized with a large clock face, which was technically part of previous Android updates, so nothing new here. The Liquid Glass and the parallax lock screen wallpaper effect are new, however. One UI 7 and Android 16 also boast a ton of personalization options, including different clock faces, styles, and colors.

Home Screen & Apps

Apple has introduced a new “Clean” appearance for iOS 26‘s stock icons, which makes them look like they’re made of glass. Could be helpful to reach a distraction-free, minimilastic look for your home screen! At the same time, both One UI 7 and Android 16 feature icon tinting, but you could technically achieve the same clean look with a custom Android launcher and one of the thousands icon packs available in the Play Store. Still not a native solution though!

Control Center/Quick Toggles

One of the more striking displays of the Liquid Glass style. We suppose Apple will be fine-tuning the appearance of the toggles here, as the legibility isn’t great at all. Android 16 and One UI 7 suffer from no such quirks: the quick toggles inherit the system color palette that you select, and usually look great.

Settings

Some small changes in iOS 26, with the density being decreased and the order of menu items changed a bit. The search bar has also been moved to the bottom. The Android and One UI 7 versions are mostly similar to one another and to their predecessors as well.

Gallery

Apple backtracked on its majorly redesigned Photos app in iOS 18 and delivered a more familiar layout with iOS 26. You get quick shortcuts to both all your photos and your Collections (a.k.a. folders), and that’s honestly a great change. Samsung’s Gallery app looks super smart itself, while Android 16‘s stock Google Photos app should be familiar to most users.

Camera

iOS 26 features a redesigned camera app, which is quite different from what most iOS users have grown accustomed with. If anything, it now looks closer to One UI and Android 16‘s layouts

AI and smart assistant

Siri hasn’t been touched in iOS 26: it has looked different since iOS 18 and can still tap into ChatGPT, but underneath it all is the same mostly incompetent smart assistant that’s usually only good for setting alarms and timers. Gemini, which is available on both Android 16 and One UI 7, is a much more capable AI chatbot/smart assistant, capable of LLM-powered reasoning as well as deep integration with the Android subsystem.

Browser

Safari scored new looks and is now arguably super-clean, with a very minimalistic look. However, many essential features are tucked away inside menus, so it’s not the most intuitive layout here. Samsung Internet and Google Chrome, which are the default browsers on One UI 7 and Android 16 look closer to standard browsers, but also fail to excite in terms of appearance.