Galaxy S23 owners say Samsung did them dirty by leaving out this feature in One UI 8.5 update

Samsung recently started rolling out the stable One UI 8.5 update for older flagships, including the Galaxy S23 series. With the update, owners of the Galaxy S23 series and other eligible devices receive improvements such as a more customizable Quick Settings Menu, lock screen customization options, more visually cohesive system menus, new, useful Galaxy AI features, and much more. Another key feature Samsung brings to certain top-tier devices is the ability to share files with Apple devices via AirDrop, a feature Google first introduced on Pixel phones last year. But in the process, Samsung has also upset users who are not receiving this feature, even though the hardware in their phones meets the requirements.

Several Galaxy S23 owners are livid about the lack of AirDrop support on their devices, and many of them have taken to online forums, including Reddit, to express their frustration. Users, including Redditor Big-Salary9046, allege this is part of “planned obsolescence,” a tactic brands are often accused of using to shorten the lifespan of devices by intentionally limiting features and performance and prompting owners to upgrade sooner.

While expressing their dissatisfaction, Big-Salary9046 also breaks down why it makes little sense for Samsung to skip AirDrop support for Galaxy S23. The user claims that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 powering the Galaxy S23 can run the underlying stack that enables Android devices to connect to AirDrop.

Essentially, Apple Wireless Direct Link (or AWDL), the protocol which powers AirDrop, requires Wi-Fi radio on the sender and receiver devices to slice the transfer into small packets and switch Wi-Fi channels quickly enough (hundreds or thousands of times per second) to keep the peer-to-peer transfer active without disconnecting from the internet. The Wi-Fi module can therefore be the bottleneck if it’s not powerful enough.

However, the Redditor claims that the chipset supports Qualcomm’s FastConnect 7800 system, which is capable of Wi-Fi 7 transfers, and there’s no reason for it to lack while interfacing with AWDL. Although it makes reasonable sense, we couldn’t verify the claims ourselves. What makes sense is that Google must work with various chip vendors to ensure the feature works on a wider range of devices, as each must be tuned and tested separately.

While the lack of support is causing outrage, it’s unlikely for Google and Samsung to change their stance. The Galaxy S23 is already excluded from the list of Galaxy devices getting the AirDrop functionality, and a possible explanation could be the requirement to dedicate additional resources to bring compatibility to older devices.

The second option is to use a third-party app, such as NearDrop, though it may be restricted to certain platforms, such as macOS.

In the meantime, we’ve written to Samsung asking for more clarity on why it chose to exclude Galaxy S23, and will be updating this piece once we get a response.