Samsung Galaxy users report washed-out gray dialer and broken colors in Google apps after One UI 8.5 Update [U]

Update 22/05/26 – 09:33 am (IST): In an alleged conversation between a user and Samsung’s customer support agent, the rep told them that “we [the company] plan to update the color scheme to a darker tone in the next update.”

So an upcoming update might address the weird dark theme issue, but I’d suggest taking the information with a grain of salt. Customer support reps aren’t exactly known for providing reliable information, especially regarding fixes and upcoming updates.

Original article published on May 13, 2026, follows:

Samsung Galaxy owners who just installed the One UI 8.5 update are waking up to a seriously broken dark mode experience.

The bug essentially ruins the system-wide color mapping across both native software and third-party applications. Most reports about the issue seem to be coming from Galaxy S25 series users, who are losing their true AMOLED black backgrounds in favor of dull, washed-out gray tones. It is a noticeable downgrade for anyone who prefers a pitch-black screen to reduce eye strain.

The native phone dialer seems to be the most obvious casualty so far. A popular post on X by user CID pointed out that build CZDP simply uses the wrong hex code for the dialer background. The user noted that the recent calls tab keeps the AMOLED black, but the dialer itself is an ugly gray.

But it’s not just the dialer app with broken colors. Google apps are faring even worse. Instead of a uniform dark theme, apps like Google Messages now display a jarring, patchy contrast. As seen in multiple screenshots shared online, menu items appear as pitch-black boxes floating against a dark gray background. It looks unfinished and makes reading the UI elements quite difficult.

Users are annoyed mostly because this feels entirely avoidable. A few early testers in the Reddit threads pointed out that this exact color glitch existed in the very first One UI 8.5 beta build. Samsung pushed it to the stable release anyway.

The theming engine just seems completely broken. One user mentioned that Gboard and Google Tasks suddenly became light gray with strange dark blue accents. Another noted that their Gmail app now has a dark gray border framing black contents. The issue seems to stem from a conflict between Samsung’s color palette engine and Google’s Material You implementation, causing elements that should be themed subtly to default to high-contrast black.

More complaints detailing the messy theming can be found here, here, here, and here.

Luckily, there seems to be a temporary workaround for the issue. You can jump into the Wallpaper and Style settings and manually change the color palette away from the default option. It’s not an ideal fix, but it does the job for now.

Samsung has yet to acknowledge the problem, so it’s unclear if we’ll see a patch anytime soon.

This color theming mess is just the latest frustration for users who jumped on the new firmware. The One UI 8.5 rollout has already drawn heavy criticism for quietly removing the option to hide the battery percentage and making it harder to check free storage.

Moreover, the update also excludes a few features that users hoped would trickle down from the Galaxy S26 series to older models with One UI 8.5. So it seems the One UI 8.5 release isn’t going as smoothly as fans hoped.

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