Last week, Samsung surprised many Galaxy fans, including us, with a bizarre requirement for the Galaxy A55’s One UI 7 beta program in South Korea. It made a Wi-Fi connection mandatory for downloading the beta software. The company didn’t explain the move, leaving users wondering why they couldn’t download the beta update over mobile data. While we still don’t have an answer, we can confirm that there’s no such requirement elsewhere.
Galaxy A55 users in India don’t need a Wi-Fi connection to download Samsung’s One UI 7 beta
After the initial release in South Korea last week, Samsung recently rolled out One UI 7 beta for the Galaxy A55 in India. We had that Korean announcement in mind, so we quickly went to check if the company enforced something similar in India. While the official banner recommended downloading the beta software over Wi-Fi, it wasn’t mandatory. Of course, we tried downloading the beta update over mobile data, and it worked like a charm.
While we had access to Wi-Fi, we wanted to check if using mobile data could lead to errors. Unsurprisingly, the beta update was downloaded and installed without any issues. This leaves us wondering why Samsung asked Korean users to download over Wi-Fi. It surely has no connections to seamless updates, something we speculated on earlier.
Since the Galaxy A55 is the only Samsung phone with support for seamless updates and access to One UI 7 beta, we speculated that the company might be enforcing a Wi-Fi connection to ensure smooth transferring of data and transitions between A/B system partitions. However, as we just saw, this works fine even with mobile data.
A carrier limitation?
So what could be the reason Samsung made such a bizarre requirement in its home country? Another explanation is that it could be a carrier thing. In Korea, One UI 7 beta is only available for Galaxy A55 units carrier-locked to SK Telecom, while the Indian variant is carrier-unlocked. It’s possible that the Wi-Fi-only installation rule was enforced at the carrier level rather than by Samsung itself.
Or maybe it’s an ongoing experiment from Samsung. The company could be adapting its policies based on carrier involvement, regional feedback, and infrastructure readiness. However, enforcing a Wi-Fi connection makes beta participation less accessible for users who rely on mobile data. We will let you know when we have more information.
