8 min Devices

Hands-on – Samsung Galaxy S25 series: a true AI phone?

Hands-on – Samsung Galaxy S25 series: a true AI phone?

In 2024, the Galaxy AI revolution began. Just as every PC would be replaced by an AI PC, the Samsung Galaxy S24 series would debut the notion of an AI phone. Its successors have arrived twelve months later, so the question quickly arises: what do the S25s offer in terms of AI innovation? And, perhaps just as importantly, what else is new beyond AI?

To get right to the point in terms of the basics: the Galaxy S25, S25+ and S25 Ultra will appear on Feb. 7. They will be exactly the same price as their predecessors with exactly the same storage sizes to pick from. The main difference compared to 2024 is that each device will now use a Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, not Samsung’s own-made Exynos SoC in some regions. The cameras are the same as before, with one exception: the ultra-wide angle on the Ultra is now 50 MP instead of 12 MP. Also, each S25 will now 12GB of RAM. It appears it’s a requirement for certain Galaxy AI features. Just as it did last year, that suite of features dominates the initial announcement.

AI everywhere

Galaxy AI debuted on the S24 series with a diverse offering. Live translated phone calls, AI summaries of Web pages and the do-what-it-says feature Circle To Search are some of them. The latter tool appears to be especially popular from Samsung’s statistics. It’s a Google innovation that makes everything on your screen searchable via Google Lens (unless it’s one of a handful of masked apps). Sjoerd Righolt, Product Manager Smartphones at Samsung, talks about “the most important AI feature to date.” There’s something to be said for that: the rest of the Galaxy AI feature set is somewhat niche. So far, that is.

Een persoon houdt een smartphone vast met een weer-app op het scherm. De telefoon toont verschillende app-iconen, waaronder Google, Gallery en Play Store. De achtergrond is een groene tabel.

The second phase of mobile AI is all about an experience integrated to its deepest essence into the phone UI and UX. This integrations starts with an AI-generated “Morning Insight” full of dynamic content. Examples of included data are your energy and sleep scores from Samsung Health, events from your calendar and breaking news. All of this is personalized and customizable, as is the “Evening brief” that follows as you wrap your day up. Throughout the day there is also a “Now Bar” that appears on your lock screen as well as in widget form when the phone’s unlocked.

The dynamic nature of this data will have to prove itself. In any case, the promise is that Samsung can link data together when it is relevant to you. The underlying idea is one of a personal AI concierge. It lets you know, for example, that you should bring your umbrella for your afternoon drink or that it’s better to travel by bike or on foot because of traffic jams.

Since this involves personal data, Samsung emphasizes that privacy remains paramount. As usual, private data resides in an on-device Knox Vault, with the Personal Data Engine preventing Samsung (or anyone else) from taking your information.

Agents working together

We have been hearing and talking about AI agents all over the enterprise IT space. In effect, these are GenAI tools that perform actions on the user’s behalf. In this, mobile AI cannot be left behind, according to Samsung. To really leverage the technology, a leap toward collaborative apps is needed. This is explained in the Galaxy AI template as an “Integrated AI Platform” and expressed by the newly introduced Cross App Action. Google Gemini is always on in the background and can fulfill your needs through a (limited) number of apps, which will perform actions based on your requests. A press of the power button puts you in touch with this AI assistant, which, by the way, does not require a subscription (yet) .

Drie Samsung Galaxy smartphones, elk met drie camera's aan de achterkant, worden op een groen oppervlak getoond. De telefoons zijn in verschillende kleuren: zilver, donkerblauw en lichtgrijs.

For now, only Google and Samsung’s apps plus Spotify and WhatsApp support these Cross App Actions. In time, other developers may join in on the fun. That will require compatibility based on Samsung/Google’s underlying framework. Since Gemini is the point of contact here, we expect this to be an Android-wide implementation. Eventually you will also be able to call up your train ticket, cinema tickets and payment requests, should the makers of the relevant apps perform the dev work required. It’s unclear exactly how tough that task is.

Bullseye?

It’s exactly this kind of fine-grained GenAI implementation that was still lacking with Galaxy AI in its infancy 12 months ago. Compatibility will take a while, but that is always the case with new innovations that touch all apps. Everything will depend on the practical usability. Experience shows that users are not too tolerant of AI misbehaviour, and they’ll quickly switch back to their old habits if the newfangled ways don’t work consistently. We look forward to putting Galaxy AI through its paces once again.

Incidentally, the already popular Circle To Search is also being improved. The tool will become multimodal: in addition to images, sounds can also be searched. Thus, the usefulness of a Shazam is suppressed some more, as Samsung is effectively adopting the Now Playing functionality in Pixel devices for recognizing music tracks. Even within your photo gallery, things can be retrieved in text and voice.

Some of the aforementioned features will also appear on the S24 series (and earlier?). Samsung One UI 7 is a complete redesign from framework to UX, full of new icons, streamlined interaction and smarter under the skin like Cross App Actions.

High-end stuff (again)

We’ve now covered the software story, but ultimately it’s the physical design which keeps the rumour mill churning every time. This year it involved the “rounding-off” of the S25 Ultra design language in two ways. First, there’s a literal rounding as the 90-degree angles of the S24 Ultra and before are a thing of the past now. This leads to the figurative rounding-off of the S25 series, as every device now looks near-identical from the display side. The size and camera arrangement are the only external differences between the Ultra and its smaller family members, apart from a slightly shorter curve on the most premium handset.

Drie Samsung-smartphones staan op een houten oppervlak tentoongesteld, voor een groot, wit Samsung-logobord.

This makes the S25 Ultra, which is still made of titanium, look less like the premium model than the S24 Ultra did compared to its cheaper brethren. Admittedly, this is a matter of taste, but it does mean that you really have to look closely to distinguish the expensive Ultra from the other S25s and especially the S25+, which is very close in size. The fact that Samsung has worked hard on the new design is evidenced by the 15 (!) grams reduction on the Ultra, a 15 percent (!) thinning and a 0.1-inch larger screen due to a visibly slimmed-down screen bezel. The S25+ (minus 7 grams) and the S25 (minus 6g) also visited the dietician.

The more powerful Snapdragon chip gets some extra cooling real estate thanks to a 40 percent larger vapor chamber in the Ultra. On the S25+ and S25, this increase is a 15 percent one. This is a particularly handsome achievement when combined with the thinning and weight reduction. Should the new Snapdragon 8 Elite stay cool, S24 Ultra comparisons can present a performance jump of 30 to 40 percent (NPU +40%, CPU +37% and GPU +30%).

Conclusion: a big leap at a distance

Samsung has high hopes for the S25 series. Not only are consumers buying increasingly pricey phones, they are willing to switch faster than ever. That doesn’t really help achieve Samsung’s stated sustainability goals, because the only way to really save the environment is to upgrade less often. Either way, customers are not choosing to do so, and that, according to the phone maker, is partly due to the pull of AI features that are simply not possible on older devices.

Most buyers will purchase the S25, S25+ or S25 Ultra to replace a two-year-old phone or something even older. Compared to an S22 or S22 Ultra, the S25 series is a big jump; those who had gotten their hands on the S24 series, on the other hand, aren’t really missing much yet. The magic word, as was true of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Z Flip 6, is refinement over innovation. In an annual release cadence with few shortcomings in an earlier model, that makes sense. It is up to Galaxy AI to really impress in its second manifestation now. A fundamentally different experience will need to come from software, and we are curious to see if the AI revolution really kicks off this time.

Also read: Review: Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 is almost the complete smartphone