The Galaxy A16 is quite special. It's the cheapest Galaxy phone on the market to get an OS update in six years.
The Galaxy A16 was launched in October this year running One UI 6.1 based on Android 14. It looks like Samsung is wasting no time in developing the first major OS update for the phone. Multiple Galaxy A16 5Gs running Android 15 have appeared in the Geekbench database over the past few days.
It's no surprise that Android 15 and One UI 7.0 are in development for multiple Galaxy phones at this point. Unfortunately, the stable version of One UI 7.0 won't be rolling out until early 2025.
Products like the Galaxy A16 will definitely not be among the first devices to get the One UI 7.0 update. That honor goes to the premium Galaxy products, with the Galaxy S24 series likely to get the update around February. The Galaxy S25 series will, of course, ship with One UI 7.0 based on Android 15.