For a while now, I've felt that unlocking my Galaxy phone has been a bit, well, boring. You know, tap, screen on, done. Sure, it works, but where's the fun? I was excited when they brought out the new fingerprint unlocking animations last year, though.

However, it looks like Samsung is spicing things up. If you're rocking the latest One UI 8.5 beta, things are about to get a whole lot more interesting when you unlock your phone. Samsung has quietly updated its LockStar module, and it's a game-changer.

According to a post, this latest version (8.5.00.8) brings fully customizable unlock animations. That means you now have a bunch of cool transition effects that make unlocking your phone feel, well, smoother and more intentional. It's a small thing, but it makes a difference.

You can pick from animation options like Slide, Expand, Spread, Wave, Warp, and Ripple. What's great is that Samsung isn't just giving you a single style. You can actually tweak these effects to your liking. This means that you can really personalize the experience.

After you've picked an effect, you can adjust things like the ripple's distortion or how fast the animation goes. You can also control the interpolator, which is how the animation speeds up or slows down. It's like you're in charge of the whole show.

More than Just Animations

While the animations are the star of the show, there's another useful update tucked away in this release. LockStar now lets you manually control the brightness of your Always On Display (AOD). Previously, you were pretty much stuck with Samsung's auto-brightness settings for the AOD. Now, you can override that. If you have a device with a full-screen AOD, like the Galaxy S24 or S25 series, this is a big deal. You can keep it dim to save battery or crank it up to see your wallpaper clearly. It's all about having more control.

Since these features are only available with One UI 8.5, right now, only those testing the One UI 8.5 beta on devices like the Galaxy S25 series get to play with them. Samsung could have easily just baked these animations into the main settings menu eventually, but putting them in LockStar shows that they're still paying attention to the enthusiast crowd. They know that some of us like to tinker with every little detail of the UI.