You buy a premium Samsung phone for fifty or sixty thousand rupees. You expect it to have all the bells and whistles. But tech moves fast, and sometimes the features you thought were cool just quietly disappear. That's exactly what is happening with the news of Samsung discontinuing AR apps 2026. The South Korean tech giant has quietly announced they're pulling the plug on two specific augmented reality applications. Quick Measure and AR Doodle are going away.
I remember trying Quick Measure to check if a new sofa would fit in my living room in Mumbai. It felt like magic at the time. You just point your camera. Lines appear on the screen telling you the distance. AR Doodle was another one of those party tricks. You could draw virtual glasses on your friend's face in a video, and the glasses would stay there even if they moved (which makes sense, actually, given how much they hyped it). Now, Samsung says these apps will be sunset on December 31, 2026.
What exactly are Quick Measure and AR Doodle?
Quick Measure is a tool that uses the sensors on your Galaxy phone to calculate real-world distances. You open the app and point your camera at an object. It tells you the width and height. It's surprisingly handy when you're buying furniture online from Pepperfry or Urban Ladder and need to check if a table fits your space.
Think about small business owners in India. If you run a small boutique or a tailoring shop, Quick Measure might have been a handy tool to get a rough estimate of fabric lengths or shop floor dimensions before buying materials. It isn't accurate enough for professional architecture. But for quick estimates, it saves a lot of time. When you're haggling over the price of a carpet in a local market, knowing the exact dimensions of your living room on your phone gives you confidence. Thing is, losing this built-in feature means downloading third-party alternatives that often come with annoying pop-up ads.
AR Doodle is a bit more fun. It lets you draw on your camera viewfinder. If you record a video of your kids playing, you can draw a virtual hat on one of them. The hat stays attached to their head as they move around the frame. It's one of those features Samsung pushed a lot a few years ago. But honestly, how many times have you used it in the last year? Probably not often.
Still, for parents, AR Doodle was a great distraction. It was a fun way to keep kids entertained on a long train journey. You hand them the phone, let them draw funny shapes, and they're quiet for an hour. Sure, you can use social media apps for this now. But parents don't always want their young kids playing around inside Instagram where they might click on sketchy content. A standalone drawing app was just safer.
The timeline for the Quick Measure shutdown
Samsung has set a hard deadline.
Both apps will stop being available for new downloads on December 31, 2026. You might not see a giant banner announcing this on your phone. The company quietly updated the app listings on the Galaxy Store to share the news.
"Please be advised that service for the Quick measure app is scheduled to be terminated on 31 December 2026. After this date, new downloads and update support for the existing app will be discontinued."
If you already have the apps installed, they won't instantly vanish from your home screen when the clock strikes midnight on New Year's Eve. You can keep using them. But there is a catch. Samsung confirmed that compatibility support won't be provided for future operating system updates.
This means when your phone updates to One UI 9, the apps will likely break. They might crash when you open them. Or the camera feed might go black. I'm not sure exactly why it happens this way, but some users on the newer Galaxy Z Fold 8 are already saying the apps are hidden from the store for them completely.
If you're reading up on Latest Tech News, you know that companies clean house all the time. Sometimes they make way for new hardware and software. Speaking of new things, if you're looking at upcoming phone releases, the Samsung Galaxy S27 Pro Rumors 2026: Expected Price & Features post has some interesting details on what hardware might replace these older software tricks.
Why are these Galaxy AR features ending?
Companies don't usually kill popular features for no reason. The hard truth is that augmented reality just never took off the way tech brands hoped. A few years ago, AR was the massive buzzword. Every tech presentation talked about how we would all live in a mixed reality world with virtual objects floating in our living rooms.
Today, the focus has shifted entirely to Artificial Intelligence.
Everyone wants smart assistants and text generators. Maintaining older AR apps takes money and engineering time. Samsung probably looked at the user data and saw that barely anyone opens Quick Measure anymore. It makes business sense to cut dead weight.
They haven't given a specific, detailed reason for the shutdown. Their official statement just says they are committed to returning with improved services in the future. That could mean they'll bake these measurement tools directly into the main camera app eventually. Or maybe they're building something entirely different based on AI.
Having these features built into the system meant they were optimized. Samsung designed Quick Measure to work perfectly with their specific camera sensors. When you use a third-party app from the Play Store, it might drain your battery faster because it isn't perfectly tuned for your specific Galaxy model. The phone might heat up more (annoying, I know). Native apps are usually just better for battery life and performance.
Finding AR Doodle app alternatives and measurement tools
If you rely on these apps, you need alternatives. Nobody wants to be stuck needing to measure a wall and realising their phone can't do it anymore.
Measuring tools for your phone
For measuring things, Google has had a few options over the years. But honestly, buying a physical measuring tape for fifty rupees at your local hardware store is still the most reliable method, if you ask me. It doesn't run out of battery. If you really want a digital solution, you can search the Google Play Store for third-party measurement tools.
Just read the reviews carefully before downloading anything. Many of the free measurement apps are full of aggressive ads that pop up every time you tap the screen. Some ask for unnecessary permissions like access to your contacts. Always check what an app wants to access before you get it.
Drawing and creative alternatives
For AR Doodle, the solution is much easier. Social media apps have completely eaten this space. Instagram and Snapchat have hundreds of augmented reality filters and drawing tools built right in. You can record a video on Instagram, add 3D stickers, draw all over it, and save the video to your phone without ever actually posting it.
It does the exact same job as AR Doodle. The tracking is often better because companies like Meta spend billions improving their camera filters. If you want a fun way to draw on videos, just use the tools you probably already have installed.
If you want to understand how companies change their product lineups, we have covered similar shifts in our Tech Explainers section. For instance, the auto industry is seeing major changes as they move to electric. You can read about the Tata Curvv EV 2026 Launch: Expected Price, Range, and Features Explained to see how hardware is evolving in India.
What you should do right now
If you own a Galaxy phone, you have a simple choice to make right now. Do you care about these apps?
If you don't care, you can safely ignore this entire situation. The apps will vanish from the store, and your phone will keep working exactly as it always has. In fact, if you never used them, you won't miss them at all.
If you love Quick Measure or AR Doodle, you need to act fast. Open the Galaxy Store today. Search for both apps and download them if they aren't already on your device. They'll stay on your phone after the December shutdown date. Just remember they have an expiration date attached to them now.
Once you install the next major Android update, which will likely be One UI 9 in 2027, they'll probably stop working entirely. The camera feed might break, or the app will just crash back to your home screen.
Here is a quick checklist of what you should do:
- Check if you actually use Quick Measure or AR Doodle on your phone.
- Open the Galaxy Store and download them before December 31 if you want them.
- Start looking for third-party measurement apps on the Google Play Store as a backup.
- Use Instagram or Snapchat for drawing on videos instead of relying on native AR tools.
This whole situation is a good reminder that we don't actually own the software on our phones. We're just renting it. Companies can give you a cool feature, and they can take it away a few years later. It's a mess when a tool you like gets killed off. I used to rely on a specific fitness widget that vanished one day without warning. You just have to learn to adapt.
And if you're keeping an eye on other rising costs and changes in the Indian market, you might want to read our breakdown on the Maruti Suzuki August 2026 Price Hike: Affected Models and Reasons Explained.
