Samsung has turned an old-school trick to make your device feel faster into an official feature in Android Pie with the new One UI. Turning off animations in the user interface no longer requires activating developer options.
New Galaxy S9 Android Pie feature: Turn off animations
Back in the day, many Android users would make their device feel faster by speeding up, or disabling, interface animations. It's something we used to recommend as well. In fact, even today it is possible to tap the Build Number field in the Settings » Software information menu seven times to unlock a whole new menu with many developer-centric features. With Android 9.0 and the new One UI, this is no longer necessary, as Galaxy Club points out.
If you head into the Advanced features section of the Galaxy S9‘s Settings app, presuming you are running the Pie beta, you can find a Reduce animations option. Switch it on, and indeed, most animations will be gone from your user experience. Most, but not all, as Samsung leaves a few in place so the interface does not become too rough.
Interestingly, Samsung had already implemented a similar feature on Galaxy devices running Android 8.1 Oreo. For example, on the Galaxy Note 9, you can find a Remove animations option in the Vision section of the Accessibility menu. However, it doesn't seem to actually affect any of the transitions, just some of the in-app animations.
Of course, this is but one small new function in a sea of bigger improvements Samsung brings to its devices with the Android 9.0 Pie update. Earlier, we saw features such as tap-to-wake AOD, a Night mode, and gesture navigation. We expect more tidbits to pop up over the next days and weeks, as we comb through the new software and Samsung releases new builds of the beta software.
If you want to keep up-to-date on all things Pie, and which devices will be upgraded in 2019, keep an eye on our One UI (Android Pie) feature focus series and also see our overview of Samsung's Android 9.0 roadmap.
