Samsung is selling the Galaxy S25 on AI — but it's the chip you should care about
Published: 23 Jan. 2025, 18:51
Updated: 24 Jan. 2025, 09:20
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- CHO YONG-JUN
- [email protected]
![From left, the Galaxy S25, Galaxy S25 Plus and Galaxy S25 Ultra [CHO YONG-JUN]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2025/01/24/f52cc314-9506-4e49-ba84-3b0c111cb76b.jpg)
From left, the Galaxy S25, Galaxy S25 Plus and Galaxy S25 Ultra [CHO YONG-JUN]
Samsung has been pushing AI as the next big selling point for its smartphones since the Galaxy S24, but the Google-powered flight search and personalized briefings — at least in the short media demo — were not the most compelling part of the new Galaxy S25.
While the S25 series likely won't count many existing S24 users as buyers, it appeared to include three solid purchases for any Android users with the need to upgrade this year. But that's not due to Galaxy AI, despite the company's heavy marketing around it. Potential buyers should instead pay attention to the line's incremental, but solid, hardware upgrades, including its new Snapdragon chip and the flagship Ultra's ultrawide camera.
The most-hyped feature, the Now Brief function, showed decent potential at Samsung's media showcase in Seoul, hours after the S25's Unpacked launch in San Francisco.
The new feature uses on-device AI and a new Personal Data Engine to learn everything about the user and then gives briefings tailored to them. Samsung explained that a morning briefing could include the weather, daily schedules and other simple data, but may also include sleep analysis using statistics from a wearable, remind users of any coupons saved on the Samsung Wallet app and more.
“Users who read morning news every morning would receive recommendations of news pages that the users frequently visited,” Samsung Electronics explained. The company said it would read user data from the Samsung Internet Browser app but did not provide further details on whether the user can alter the recommended news.
![Galaxy S25 shows the new Now Brief feature [CHO YONG-JUN]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2025/01/24/b91acf1d-3162-4057-8203-baa1d08c2081.jpg)
Galaxy S25 shows the new Now Brief feature [CHO YONG-JUN]
It only operates properly after it's been able to learn about its user over a long period, however, and the only card displayed was the weather. It's hard to imagine such a feature making the phone worth buying on its own.
The side button, which doubled as a button to summon Samsung’s own voice assistant, Bixby, on the S24 line, now calls Google’s Gemini. The assistant had no issue understanding Korean, even when the user made and corrected mistakes while delivering voice queries. The version of Gemini in the S25 shows a glimpse of Project Astra, which aims for a multimodal assistant that can interact with other apps on the phone.
On the demo floor, Gemini was asked to search for available flights for an upcoming business trip, then summarize and text its findings to a work senior. The assistant was ultimately able to provide details of the available flights and generate a formal message to be sent, but it took a few attempts to get there, misunderstanding several voice prompts and presented unrelated answers along the way.
Gemini also had constant issues distinguishing Gimpo International Airport from the Incheon International Airport and was also unable to help purchase the tickets.
![From left, the Galaxy S25, Galaxy S25 Plus and Galaxy S25 Ultra [CHO YONG-JUN]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2025/01/24/49a8dbd4-6cde-4de9-b497-57b0eb5ff1a7.jpg)
From left, the Galaxy S25, Galaxy S25 Plus and Galaxy S25 Ultra [CHO YONG-JUN]
Many of the AI features also come with a caveat: Samsung, in its fine print, states that Galaxy AI will be “provided for free until the end of 2025” but does not specify pricing — or which, if any, features those who choose not to subscribe will be able to use. The company declined to comment on those matters to the Korea JoongAng Daily, saying only that the lack of a Gemini subscription would “not affect other features.” The S25 does come with a free six-month subscription to Google's Gemini Advanced.
The exterior design changes are the most apparent on the Ultra variant — long gone are the squared-off and angular edges inherited from the Galaxy Note lineup, in favor of more rounded-off, smoother edges. This, alongside a shorter, slimmer chassis with smaller bezels, makes the Ultra easier to grip with one hand than previous iterations were, though the non-Ultra S25 options are still comparatively rounder.
All three Galaxy S25 phones are also equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy, a customized version of Qualcomm's chip that should be both faster and more efficient. The company also said the chip grants a 40 percent performance boost, compared to Galaxy S24, on 3DMark Solar-Bay and an 18 percent frame rate increase in a benchmark using Vulkan.
The Ultra also got a new 50-megapixel ultrawide lens while the other two models keep the S24's setup, including a 50-megapixel main wide shooter and the 12 megapixel ultrawide camera. The S25 also features log video recording for power users wishing to color grade their footage manually.
The Ultra also maintains the S Pen but has removed Bluetooth functionality, meaning it can no longer remotely control the camera shutter, a “difficult” decision Samsung says it made in the name of a “thinner and streamlined design.”
Samsung Electronics also teased a thin, slimmer variant, the S25 Edge, which is expected to hit the market in the first half of this year, alongside Project Moohan, an XR headset co-developed with Google.
Preorders for the Galaxy S25 series will be available from Friday until Feb. 3. The Ultra variant that offers 16GB of RAM, as opposed to the normal 12GB, will also be available to preorder on Samsung Electronics' online store.
BY CHO YONG-JUN [[email protected]]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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