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Samsung delivered the second One UI 9 beta build for the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Galaxy Z Flip 7 on September 8, beginning the rollout in South Korea — and this one is substantially more interesting than the first. Where Beta 1 focused on Quick Panel layout tweaks and stability groundwork, Beta 2 hands four Galaxy AI features that debuted on the Galaxy Z Fold 8 and Galaxy S26 — confirmed by Android Authority — to owners of 2025's flagship foldables. US, UK, and India participants — the other three markets confirmed for the program — should expect the build to follow shortly.

The four additions — Call Brief, Custom Cards in Now Brief, Now Nudge, and My FanCam — are not minor refinements. They represent Samsung's newest tier of on-device AI: tools that processes personal data locally on the phone, without routing anything to Samsung's cloud servers, using the 12 GB of LPDDR5X RAM the Z Fold 7 carries as the minimum hardware threshold for this processing tier. That's the technical reason the Z Fold 7 qualifies for features that older or lower-RAM Galaxy devices won't receive — and it's worth understanding before deciding whether this update changes the calculus on a Fold 8 hardware upgrade.

Samsung's Beta 2 build arrives just one week after Beta 1, signaling a compressed testing cadence that suggests a mid-to-late September stable release remains on track. For enrolled beta participants in South Korea, the update is live now. Participants in the US, UK, and India should watch for the build in the days ahead.

What These Four Features Actually Do — and How

Call Brief: Caller Context, Surfaced at the Moment You Need It

Call Brief displays contextual information about your caller during a voice call — directly on the call screen, in real time. That information can include upcoming shared calendar events, recent message exchanges, or notes that connect to this person. The practical effect is eliminating the mid-call scramble through other apps to remember what you were supposed to discuss.

What makes this technically meaningful is how it works. Call Brief is powered by Samsung's Personal Data Engine (PDE), which processes data inside Knox-protected storage — contacts, calendar, call logs, and message history — locally, without sending anything to Samsung's servers. Enabling the feature requires turning on "Phone" under Settings for Personal Data Intelligence at Settings → Security and privacy → More privacy settings → Personal data intelligence. Users can toggle it off at any point. The PDE's context-reading pipeline runs on the device's Hexagon Neural Processing Unit (NPU), which is why this feature needs the Qualcomm Snapdragon hardware in the Z Fold 7 specifically — it runs local AI inference without a network connection.

My FanCam: Shoot Wide, Choose Your Subject Later

My FanCam is the update's most visible addition for anyone who records video at events. The My FanCam workflow after recording is simple: record your video the way you normally would, capturing the wide scene without worrying about tracking a specific person. Afterward, open the clip in Samsung Gallery, tap the Galaxy AI Editor, select My FanCam, and tap the person you want the clip to center on. The feature then generates a new version of the video with that person tracked and reframed throughout, in an aspect ratio you choose.

The distinction from Samsung's existing "Auto Track" feature — which also tracks a subject — matters here. Auto Track works during recording, requiring you to designate a subject before you press record. My FanCam works after recording is complete, which means it can rescue footage from a moment when tracking was impractical: a musician playing in a crowd, a kid in a youth sports game, a family member in a group celebration. You capture the scene; the AI decides the frame.

My FanCam runs entirely on the device. Samsung's official changelog confirms videos are processed on-device rather than sent to the cloud. The feature requires a trackable human subject — it does not work with animals or scenes where no subject can be identified. Samsung notes it does not access or store biometric data for this feature.

Now Nudge: On-Screen Context Triggers Suggestions

Now Nudge takes a more ambient approach to AI assistance. Where Now Brief displayed a daily summary of relevant information, Now Nudge continuously recognizes what's on your screen and surfaces a contextual suggestion for the next action. If a text conversation starts to involve making plans, Now Nudge may surface a shortcut to Calendar. If you're reading an email about a location, it might offer Maps.

The mechanism is the same PDE pipeline as Call Brief and Custom Cards: the on-screen context analysis runs locally, using the NPU, not a cloud call. Samsung's official Galaxy AI page describes Now Nudge as a proactive suggestion feature, consistent with the agentic AI anticipates next action philosophy Samsung has described for the Galaxy S26 generation. The "agentic" framing describes the design philosophy: the phone anticipates rather than responds.

Custom Cards in Now Brief: A Schedulable Briefing Layer

Custom Cards expand the Now Brief widget from a fixed daily summary into a configurable briefing layer. Users can create cards drawing from Samsung Health (sleep score, energy score, step count, nutrition), the Weather app, and YouTube (based on topic preferences), then schedule them to surface at a specific time each day. The three custom cards per day limit applies alongside a daily cap on how many times cards can be created or edited.

The result is a Now Brief widget that reflects the owner's specific priorities rather than Samsung's default selection — a meaningful step toward the "smart personal assistant" experience the Galaxy AI platform has been building toward across the past two generations.

Why the Z Fold 7 Gets These Features — and What That Means for the Upgrade Decision

These four features run on-device. That requirement is not incidental — it's the engineering constraint that determines which Galaxy devices receive them. Samsung's Galaxy AI platform uses Android AICore routes to NPU, the framework that directs inference to the device's Hexagon Neural Processing Unit. The 12 GB RAM minimum requirement for the Gemini Nano v3 model underpinning these features is met by both the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Galaxy Z Flip 7, which were released in July 2025 carrying 12 GB of LPDDR5X RAM. They qualify. Older Galaxy devices with 8 GB or lower will receive other One UI 9 features but not this tier of Galaxy AI.

That hardware parity — the Z Fold 7 meeting the same RAM threshold as the Z Fold 8 — is why these features can travel via a software update rather than requiring new silicon. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2 in the Z Fold 7 includes a Hexagon NPU capable of running the inference workload required by My FanCam and the PDE-based features. The Z Fold 8 uses the newer Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 "for Galaxy," which carries additional performance headroom, but for these specific features, the Gen 2 is sufficient.

The practical question for Z Fold 7 owners: does receiving Call Brief, My FanCam, Now Nudge, and Custom Cards via software reduce the case for upgrading to the Fold 8? The honest answer is yes — partially. The four features arriving in this beta were among the most visible AI additions Samsung advertised for the Fold 8. What Fold 8 hardware remains exclusive over the Z Fold 7 after this update: the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 "for Galaxy" chip (running at 4.74 GHz vs. 4.61 GHz standard, with the Adreno 840 at 1.3 GHz), a 4,800 mAh silicon-carbon battery (up from the Z Fold 7's 4,400 mAh graphite cell), the Flex Titanium display stack, and the passport-style 4:3 inner display design. Software features have now substantially closed — but the hardware gap remains real.

Six Bug Fixes That Beta Testers Were Waiting For

Beta 2 also addresses several stability and usability issues flagged during Beta 1. The Beta 2 bug fix changelog covers seven total changes, the majority of which are repairs to problems beta participants had reported in the first week.

The most consequential is a Fold 7-specific display wake failure: opening the device caused only the cover screen to illuminate, leaving the main inner display dark. For a phone whose defining feature is the inner display, this was a significant bug for beta participants. Beta 2 corrects it.

The other fixes: Wi-Fi disconnections (a recurring complaint from Beta 1 participants), 15x zoom video recording failures when the camera's maximum zoom was set to 15x, Bixby Vision translation errors in certain scenarios, intermittent Contacts app crashes, and gaming controller pairing failures.

Galaxy S25 FE Also Receives Beta 2 Simultaneously

Samsung expanded the Beta 2 build to the Galaxy S25 FE at the same time as the Z Fold 7 and Z Flip 7. The S25 FE joins Beta 2 alongside the Galaxy S25, S25+, S25 Ultra, Galaxy Z Fold 7, and Galaxy Z Flip 7 in the current beta wave — six devices across four markets — in what Samsung appears to be a coordinated push to finalize One UI 9 across the full 2025 lineup before stable arrives. If Samsung follows its historical cadence, a stable release for these devices should arrive in mid-to-late September 2026.

Does One UI 9 Beta 2 Make the Case for Keeping Your Z Fold 7?

Enrolled beta testers can check for Beta 2 by going to Settings → Software update → Download and install. The build ZZI6 around 700 MB in OTA package size, though the exact size may vary by model and region. The beta program covers South Korea, the US, India, and the UK; participants in markets other than South Korea should watch for the build within the next few days.

If you are not yet enrolled, join through the Samsung Members app in supported markets by navigating to the Notices section and tapping the One UI 9 Beta Program banner. Note that in the US, the program is currently limited to factory-unlocked (U1) models; carrier-branded variants remain ineligible for this build.

Frequently Asked Questions

What new AI features does One UI 9 Beta 2 add to the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Galaxy Z Flip 7?

Beta 2 brings four Galaxy AI features that previously shipped exclusively on the Galaxy Z Fold 8, Galaxy Z Flip 8, and Galaxy S26 families. Call Brief displays contextual information about your caller during a voice call — calendar events, message history, relevant notes — directly on the call screen. Custom Cards in Now Brief lets you build personalized daily briefing cards from Samsung Health, Weather, and YouTube data, scheduled to appear at a chosen time. Now Nudge reads the current screen and surfaces a relevant next action, such as offering a Calendar shortcut when a message conversation shifts toward making plans. My FanCam lets you tap a person in an already-recorded video and generates a new, subject-tracked, reframed clip with that person centered throughout. All four run on-device without cloud access.

Why does the Z Fold 7 qualify for these AI features when older Galaxy devices don't?

The four features run through Samsung's Personal Data Engine on Android's AICore framework, which routes inference to the device's Hexagon NPU. Samsung sets the 12 GB RAM minimum requirement for the Gemini Nano v3 model that powers this tier of Galaxy AI. The Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Z Flip 7 both carry 12 GB of LPDDR5X RAM, which meets this threshold. Galaxy devices with less RAM — certain older Galaxy S and A series models — will receive other One UI 9 features but will not receive this AI tier.

Should I upgrade from the Galaxy Z Fold 7 to the Galaxy Z Fold 8 now that Beta 2 delivers these AI features?

The upgrade case is narrower than it was before Beta 2, but the hardware gap is real. The four features arriving via software were among the Fold 8's most prominently advertised Galaxy AI additions — receiving them on the Z Fold 7 removes them from the "reasons to upgrade" column. What Fold 8 hardware remains exclusive over the Z Fold 7: the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 "for Galaxy" chipset (a 3nm process with higher sustained performance headroom), the silicon-carbon anode 4,800 mAh battery (compared to the Z Fold 7's 4,400 mAh graphite cell), the Flex Titanium display stack, and the wider passport-style 4:3 inner display design. If you primarily wanted the AI features, the case to stay on the Z Fold 7 just got meaningfully stronger.

When does One UI 9 stable arrive for the Galaxy Z Fold 7?

Samsung has not announced a specific stable release date for the Z Fold 7 or Z Flip 7. Based on Samsung's historical cadence — the Galaxy S25 series received Android 16 (One UI 8.5) in mid-September 2025, followed quickly by older models before the month ended — a mid-to-late September 2026 stable release for the Z Fold 7 and Z Flip 7 is a reasonable expectation. The beta program's rapid pace — Beta 2 arrived exactly one week after Beta 1 — suggests Samsung is on track for a stable release without extended delays.